Having Irish Catholic ancestors, I wanted to share some observations regarding the words FATHER and MOTHER.    My parents were born in America in the early 1900s.  Apparently, the word FATHER was traditionally reserved for priests, whereas the word MOTHER was proper for female parents.

Irish Catholics usually seemed to prefer “dad”, or less often, “da”.  I knew kids who used the word “pop”, but none seemed to be of Irish descent.  Some of my Protestant friends used the word “father” to address their male parent, which seemed weird to me as a child.

My mother and aunts usually used the word “mother” to address their female parents.  Although my mother would have liked me to do the same, times had changed and I insisted on caller her “mom”.  She endured this generational shift, but did make it clear that calling her “ma” or “mummy” would be disrespectful.

Incidentally, during my early childhood, our pastor was called “Monsignor”, which seems to be equivalent to “My Lord”.