Calling someone “baby” doesn’t really seem like a compliment, if you think about it. But people call their significant other, “baby” all the time, and don’t literally mean “you’re acting like an infant”, but “you’re dear to me.”
How far back does this colloquialism go, and is it limited to English?
It goes back a long way.
late 14c., babi, “infant of either sex,” diminutive of babe (see babe) with -y (3). Meaning “childish adult person” is from c. 1600. Meaning “youngest of a group” is by 1897. As a term of endearment for one’s lover it is attested perhaps as early as 1839, certainly by 1901 (OED writes, “the degree of slanginess in the nineteenth-century examples is not easily determinable”); its popularity perhaps boosted by baby vamp “a popular girl” (see vamp (n.2)), student slang from c. 1922.
I call my wife “babe” all the time. It’s nice to know that it likely dates from 1839.
The word, used thus, seems extremely infantilizing to me. I would never use it that way, and if someone called me that, I would politely ask them not to.
I call her babe, and she calls me sweetie. It works quite well for us.
Then again, by the standards of the timeframes over which languages develop, 1839 - less than two centuries in the past - isn’t all that long ago. I’m actually surprised it isn’t much older than that. “Baby” as a Word for an infant is certainly older (you can see it in the word itself - it’s an imitation of baby talk itself, and this very likely to go a very long way back in the history of language). And once you have a word for an infant, using that word as a term for endearment for a loved one isn’t such a big leap.
Don’t call me Cookie and I won’t call you Cake.
I don’t know another language it was used in, and “tested” as such sounds utterly inane, but due to the ubiquity of English language pop culture, it feels perfectly normal in that particular context / language.
Without any evidence, I suggest that calling a female “Baby” or “Babe” is mainly confined to the US.
I think that most, if not all of the women with whom I am acquainted would object to being infantilised in this way.
I’m not sure what, if anything, the existence of this song says, but it seems to be relevant.
A quick perusal of song titles from the UK and other English speaking countries will disabuse you of that notion real quick.
It doesn’t have to be. It’s extremely common in use by both men and women. As @Bootb notes, it’s used in popular song constantly and has been for a century.
However, there was a period in the 1920s and 30s when young women resorted to baby talk with their men. It’s thoroughly satirized in this scene from Horsefeathers.
I don’t know of any equivalent in your or my lifetimes, though.
Of course it may well be older than that. With this sort of thing, you’re of course limited to written examples. This usage seems like the kind of thing that people might have used in private, spoken conversations.
I think you may be confusing two, or possibly three, different things:
I still see that as an overt and explicit infantilizing term, when used by someone of any gender as a term of endearment toward someone of any gender. How much more explicitly infantilizing can a term like “baby” be?
Good for you. You can make this your personal cause to eradicate.
You may be right about that. It’s not a term I ever use myself, and it does strike me as odd. But the fact remains that it is a very common and popular term of endearment, which apparently lots of people do not find demeaning or problematic.
This is General Questions, so all comments should be related to a factual answer to the OP’s question. Debates over the appropriateness of the term “baby” as a term of endearment belong elsewhere, so everyone please bear that in mind.
RickJay
Moderator
There’s a related phenomenon in Spanish of calling both your children and your lovers “mami/papi” or diminutives thereof (“mamacita” etc.)
