"ma", "pa", and "da" are all among the first sounds a babbling baby typically learns to make. (As an aside, in my native language Finnish the most common word

"ma", "pa", and "da" are all among the first sounds a babbling baby typically learns to make. (As an aside, in my native language Finnish the most common word for mother, äiti, is notably not a "ma" word. It's apparently a loan from some Proto-Germanic word that has itself disappeared from extant Germanic languages. However, Finnish does have its own ancient "ma" word that means "mother": emä or emo, which is still in use when referred to non-human animal mothers, in poetry, and in a figurative sense in compound words such as emolevy "motherboard" or emäalus "mothership".)