People are saying that Mom is the correct spelling and that it's not American, while others are saying it's Mum and that Mom is American.
So which is the correct spelling for the UK?
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Both spellings are correct and derive from mommy and mummy. According to Ngram, Mom/mom is the more common spelling in AmE, while Mum/mum is more common in BrE:
Mom :
- 1867, American English, perhaps a shortening of mommy; also see mamma. Adjectival phrase mom and pop dates from 1951.
Mum:
- pet word for "mother," 1823, short for mummy (see mamma). In British sociology, used from 1957 in reference to "the working class mother as an influence in the lives of her children." Also sometimes a vulgar corruption of madam.
(Etymonline)
It is worth considering also the related term Mam/mam:
(informal and colloquial) Diminutive of mother.
Etymology:
Possibly either conserved from or influenced by earlier Brythonic language.
(Wiktionary)
Mam:
We have several informal words for “mother” in English: mum (heard in much of England), mom (heard in much of America), and mam (heard in Ireland and Northern England). But are these actually different words, or are they just, in some sense, the same word?
Although “mum,” “mam,” and “mom” read differently, they’re often pronounced in a very similar way. Here’s a comparison of three different dialects, and their “mom” pronunciations (don’t worry if you aren’t proficient in IPA — I’ll explain after):
London: “mum” — [mɐm]
General American: “mom” — [mɑm]
Manchester, UK: “mam” — [mam]
Whether you understand the IPA symbols above or not, the point is that in these three dialects, the words are quite close in pronunciation. To be fair, there are some regions where this is not the case. In the Western US, for example, mom is often more clearly “mawm.”
(dialectblog.com)
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2Hmm... and yet this answer had the most reliable, objective, and respected external sources ... – Mari-Lou A Mar 08 '17 at 19:21
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It's been "mom" in the US since the 50s at least, to my personal knowledge, shortened from "mommy" or "mama". – Hot Licks Jan 09 '16 at 02:16
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3Virtually all the references to "mummy" in the US Ngram are to the cloth-wrapped corpse. – Hot Licks Jan 09 '16 at 02:31
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And most of the older references to "mum" are either bogus character combos or uses of the word to mean "ma'am". (The later references appear valid, though.) – Hot Licks Jan 09 '16 at 02:34
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"Mammy" appears to largely be references to a black childcare worker. – Hot Licks Jan 09 '16 at 02:37
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Most of the older references to "mom" appear to be OCR errors (eg, misreading "morn") or abbreviations of some sort. – Hot Licks Jan 09 '16 at 02:43
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@HotLicks COHA says it'd been mum until 1900, and after that, mom's dominated in the US. It's strange how the results disagree with the Google Books results. – Færd Jan 09 '16 at 04:16
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That should tell you just how poor of a gauge Ngrams and their ilk are; fun to look at - useless to use. – Mazura Jan 09 '16 at 05:59
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1@Mazura I wouldn't say "useless", you can always look at the results listed at the bottom of these charts. Often a British author will use American terms if the plot requires it, and British authors are published in the States, and hence AmEng and BrEng expressions will overlap. So, are you saying that none of the two charts should be taken seriously? The results seem to confirm that mom and its variants is AmEng, don't you think? – Mari-Lou A Jan 09 '16 at 06:45
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1mum British English informal, mom American English informal – I don't know who I am. Jan 09 '16 at 06:53
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@Mari-LouA - I'm saying they should be taken with an extremely large grain of salt. All it represents are those offerings that have been digitized. And if the results differ, someone's (or both of their) sample sizes aren't big enough. If we took Ngrams of audio clips, it'd be a rather distorted view of the English language. (heh... distorted ;) - What do people SAY in [location]? cannot be answered by 'grams'. – Mazura Jan 09 '16 at 07:03
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And I assert that "saying" they are "useless" is a bit over the top. The charts Dan provided give a good indication of the trend. I too have written about the pitfalls of using Ngram to support answers on EL&U and meta; they are helpful tools but they need to be used judiciously and with a "pinch of salt", as you rightly point out. – Mari-Lou A Jan 09 '16 at 07:10
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Taken out of context, but well said: "These are crude results. Only a closer analysis with a considerable amount of research could determine the context in which each is found..." –Barrie England - But yea, 'useless' might have been a little overly dramatic. At the very least I don't consider them less than useful. – Mazura Jan 09 '16 at 07:25
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A big problem with a term like mum/mom is that the words are quite informal and would generally only appear in dialogs involving children. This is probably less than 0.1% of the texts that have been scanned. Further, many of the texts that use the terms are apt to be "historical" in nature and will use the terms that the author believes were used 50-100 years earlier, vs current terminology. At the very least the timeline must be adjusted by about 50 years to be halfway realistic. – Hot Licks Jan 09 '16 at 13:03
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3Although I understand the reasons, and in many circumstances it is justified, the requirement for documentation on SE English Language can be a problem. So for a question that every native Briton can tell you the answer, Dan is obliged to go to ngram, and then suffer a lecture from @HotLicks about ngram's limitations. Unlike others here, I never answer questions in comments, but I used to write to my own mum (when I was at college or living abroad) so I know how I addressed her. Perhaps I should put the letters on the web so I can quote them in an answer. – David Feb 28 '17 at 17:35
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@HotLicks - No. Mom is more recent than that. And there is more variation than you suggested. In Boston they have mums. Many children and some adults say Mommy. Mama is also common, although, granted, Mom has gained a lot of ground. – aparente001 Mar 02 '17 at 07:50
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@aparente001 - More recent than what? "Mom" was certainly in common use in the US in 1960. – Hot Licks Mar 02 '17 at 13:05
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@HotLicks You wrote, 'It's been "mom" in the US since the 50s at least, to my personal knowledge, shortened from "mommy" or "mama".' I took this to mean you feel that "Mom" took over as most common name of endearment for "mother" in the U.S.in the 50's if not earlier. Did I misunderstand you? I agree that it has become the most common, but I think this occurred later than the 50's. – aparente001 Mar 02 '17 at 15:04
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@aparente001 - I suppose I should have qualified that -- I meant to say that "mom" was reasonably popular. When I was about 7 years old, around 1956, I decided to begin calling my mother "mom" instead of "mommy". (I remember standing in the back yard telling her, and we moved the next year.) I can only guess that this was what my older peers were using and I wanted to sound more "grown up". Certainly other terms were (and still are) used -- there is clearly no way to establish which term was most popular when. – Hot Licks Mar 02 '17 at 17:59
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@HotLicks - I think "Mama" has been holding out more in the South than in the north but I'm not sure. – aparente001 Mar 03 '17 at 07:53
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@aparente001 - You're probably right. I haven't had any sort of "relationship" with southern language for about 50 years, so I can't really say. – Hot Licks Mar 03 '17 at 12:35
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Mom is an intimate, personal word, a nickname, though a common one. Such words have no standard spellings, because they are not standards; they are personal. Everybody pronounces Mom or Ma or Muv or Mama or Momma or Mo or Muh -- or whatever -- their own way. That's before they learn there is any spelling.
And how often do you write words like that? Not nearly as often as you say them. So there are no standard spellings because there is no standard intimacy. At least not in writing.
Executive Summary: Spell it any way you like; it's your word.
John Lawler
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1+1 I think it's easiest for babies to develop speech with ma sounds, and which is why, I think, most languages have some spelling variants of those sounds -- mum, mom, mummy, mama, ummi/ummati (Arabic and related languages), amma/imma/umma/ammachi (various south Indian languages), maa/mataji (Hindi and related languages). – NVZ Mar 02 '17 at 08:04
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Warning: Strong text
I quote the well-respected English poet, Philip Larkin, from This Be The Verse:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
I heard this recited on a BBC radio broadcast in the ’70s or ’80s (much to the consternation of my late mother-in-law). I can’t find a precise reference to the original programme, but I believe the poem was included in a more recent broadcast of his poems, so you could say that this establishes ‘mum’ as BBC English as well as literary English.
And as Wikipedia and everyone this side of the Atlantic knows, ‘Mum’ has the royal imprimatur: Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was known familiarly in Britain as “The Queen Mum”:
Popularly, she became the “Queen Mother” or the “Queen Mum”.
And for those who may ask whether this usage persists into the internet age, there is Mumsnet, which claims to be:
“the UK’s most popular parenting website”
So in Britain, albeit with regional variations, mum’s the word, used by poet, prince and parent. (And me.)
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Minor point, but the Queen Mum, as she was widely known, was 'Her Royal Highness' only when she was Duchess of York, prior to December 1936., Since then she became 'Her Majesty' or since 2002 'Her late Majesty'. – davidlol Feb 28 '17 at 22:25
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Today 'mum' is certainly the correct spelling of the word in the UK.
Oxford dictionaries confirm that 'mom' is a spelling pertaining to North America:
mom (noun)
North American term for mum
While Cambridge concur that 'mom' is an American spelling of the equivalent 'mum': -
mom noun
/mɒm/ us /mɑːm/ US informal UK mum
The difference in spelling may be cultural
...we know that America had officially become a "new nation" in 1776 so it seems that "mum" and "mom" are a cultural difference between the two countries.
Or Simply Phonetic:
One possible reason for the difference between the ‘o’ and ‘u’ of the more common ‘mom’ and ‘mum’ may be the Great Vowel Shift (GVS)...a major change in pronunciation in England...Vowel sounds changed in the GVS from 1350 and 1700 so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that America, as a new nation, got the tail end of the shift in pronunciation.
But 'mum' is the correct spelling in the UK, and 'mom' is recognised as an American word.
This wasn't always the case however. In Middle English Circa 1400s words were spoken as they were pronounced, the word 'mome' was used to mean mother, and was likely pronounced /moːm/.
The same source quoted above cites Etymonline when referring to both mom and mum as being derived from the word 'mamma'
...diminutives of ‘mother’ in English—such as ‘mom’, which uses the central nearly open vowel /ɒ/, and ‘mum’, which uses the back open-mid vowel /ʌ/—, are offshoots from ‘mamma’ which date back to the 1570s.
Having checked the source myself, this is what they have to say on the matter, regarding the noun mamma, and early English usage of 'mom' and 'mum':
Its late appearance in English is curious, but Middle English had mome (mid-13c.) "an aunt; an old woman," also an affectionate term of address for an older woman. In educated usage, the stress is always on the last syllable. In terms of recorded usage of related words in English, mama is from 1707, mum is from 1823, mummy in this sense from 1839, mommy 1844, momma 1852, and mom 1867.
So in fact both 'mom' and 'mum' are words derived from the word 'mamma' with early recorded usage back in the 1570s in England.
It's interesting to note also that there are regional differences across the UK, in the Midlands the word 'mom' is sometimes used still (owing to dialectical inflection) while in Northern Ireland 'mam' is in popular usage, and recognized as an informal word for 'mother', with origins dating back to the 16th century.
Gary
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I have always spelled it mom, but depending where you live, it will be totally different. To me either way is right because a lot of words have multiple spelling choices.
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My comments are from my own experience. Both my husband and I served in the British Army, so between us we met a lot of people over the last forty years. We have never heard the word mum/mummy unless it was with someone making a joke.
Mom not sure from where, but I associate it with the USA. I have lots of aunts and cousins there and they do not use this form, but I cannot say if it's where I have heard it on visits. My husband is Scottish while I am Welsh from both Welsh and Scottish families.
We say Mam on both sides, though we often read Ma in the Scottish comics. (The Broons and Oou Wullie).
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3I'm amazed that Carol Simpson has never heard 'mum/mummy'. I know 'mam' is used in Wales, but 'mum' is the standard form in England. I believe the US/UK difference evolved because the 19th century 'mama/mamma' was pronounced 'momma' in the US but 'mu-MA' (with the stress on the second syllable' in England. – Kate Bunting Dec 07 '16 at 15:28
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The correct way to spell Mom is Mom.
The correct way to spell Mum is Mum.
But if you really want to be correct use
Mother
davidlol
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4What does correct mean? Mum is the correct spelling for the British familar address (for those that use it). Mom is the correct spelling for the US familiar address (for those that use it). Mother is the correct spelling for the standard English word for a female parent. The spellings are all correct although the usage is different. Incorrect spellings would be Muem, Moom and Muther. – David Feb 28 '17 at 20:32
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'Regional variations' don't come into it. 'mom/mommy' in British English is almost exclusively mistaken or ignorant… too sad for words, since in less than 100 years neither will be a reason to get it right.
‘Ma’ can be heard almost anywhere in Britain and from almost any age for, at a guess, more than 1,000 years…
From ‘mum/mummy’ to ‘mom/mommy’ is so vast, I grew up a mere 50 years ago with people who would not use ‘Mum.’ The preference was ‘Mummy’ and ‘Mother’ an acceptable compromise but ‘Mum’ was clearly a vowel too far…
– Robbie Goodwin Mar 02 '17 at 20:17