In your world, what is the title given to Mothers and Fathers?

I call my Mother 'Mother', and sometimes 'Mum'. Dad is always just Dad.

But since acquainting myself with several Americans I've heard Papa, Pa, Ma, Mama, even Ma'am sometimes (I mean do any of you guys really call your Mother Ma'am?)

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to see how you translate these titles across into you world, or if you just use what you know?

I do when she's mad at me. * grins *

Ahem. When I am writing a story, I generally use whatever seems to me to fit the social surroundings and tone of the character's most (because of course none of those words are ones that my actual characters use since they don't speak English).

Occasionally I also decide to use the made up word for 'mother' or 'father' in whatever language the character's speak, if it seems that will do best in the story. It depends on how hard of a linguistic learning curve I want to give the reader.

It depends on the social/cultural situation of the character, how they grew up, their personalities, their parents' personalities... lots of things.

My character Ingvar grew up as a prince. I imagine it would make sense for him to address his parents in a more formal, proper way - so he calls them Mother and Father (or he did, before his mother passed away). Or 'sir' sometimes, in the case of his father.

Koen and Fay are growing up with a loving but poor family - they love it though, despite the fact their father is always gone. So they use the more affectionate, informal terms of 'Mum' and 'Da' (now that they're older; it used to be 'Mummy', but it was always 'Da' for their father).

So yeah; for me, it depends on the situation.

I haven't developed this for my non-human races yet, but my different people groups use names based on their heart tongues. The family I mainly work with uses Ta and Ma (Tada and Mama from the younger children). Sadly though, most of my characters don't have parents anymore...

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Well, I've got a character that says "Mother" and "Father", a character that says "Mum" and "Father", and another that said "Mama" and "Daddy". For me it depends on the age, and how much I want the reader to empathize with the parents/ understand the relationship. If it's a loving relationship, then I use 'pet names' and if it's more formal, I use the more official term.

"Mom" and "Dad" feel out of place in a fantasy world, so my characters usually call their parents "Ma" and "Pa", or "Mama" and "Papa" (either for a more affectionate word, or because the child is young), or "Mother" and "Father" (for a more formal word). I make up languages, but I don't use words from them in stories when there's already an English word, like Mother and Father.