There aren’t many similarities between Birmingham in the UK and Alabama, but one that binds the two cities is that they both say ‘mom’. In the US, this is the norm; in the UK, less so, where you call your mother almost anything else—mum, mummy, mumsy, ma, mama. In Birmingham, however, ‘mom’ is the common spelling.
What’s the history of ‘mum’ vs. ‘mom’?
Both these words come from the modern English ‘mother’ (which itself comes from the Old English ‘modor’ for a female parent). You might think the prominent ‘O’ here is a clue that ‘mom’ is the original and ‘mum’ is a bastardisation, but that’s not the case. ‘Mum’ is the elder of the two.
‘Mommy’ makes its first appearance in literature in 1844, while ‘mom’ pops up a little later in 1867. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known use of ‘mum’ as a noun is from around 1595, although ‘mome’ does appear in the 1400s for an ‘older woman’.
As far as I can tell, neither were particularly popular until the 20th century, however. Meanwhile, ‘mam’ predates them both, with variations appearing all over the world. You can find similar-sounding words in Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic. In Brythonic Celtic, the word for mother is literally ‘mamm’.
The common belief behind this worldwide spread is that ‘mama’ is a common sound in a baby’s speech development. It’s why we have so many variations on the same word, and what makes it so difficult to dig into the specific origins of ‘mom’ words. They’re all entangled with one another in very confusing ways.
So why do Brummies say ‘mom’?
While one lazy ‘mom’ theory says Birmingham is copying Americans, if you listen, they’re often saying something closer to ‘mahm’ across the pond, rather than Birmingham’s hard ‘mom’. For a better theory, we have to go back to the ‘Great Vowel Shift’ (1400s-1700s), when the pronunciation of vowels started changing in the UK.
In the time of Shakespeare and Chaucer, our language saw a drift in the way many vowels were pronounced. Yet Birmingham, the Black Country, and many more dialects in the West Midlands kept these old vowel sounds the way they were—it’s why the word ‘tea’ sounds more like ‘tay’ here.
Our best guess is that ‘mom’ is actually closer to an older pronunciation of ‘mother’/’mum’, and as such, probably the more correct way! It’s likely, however, as a local desire to solidify Birmingham’s identity has grown, so has the use of ‘mom’ in the region in recent decades—popping up on Mother’s Day presents more and more.