The Most Common First Baby Words (an Unauthoritative Collection)

Every day during her first months of life, I would tell my daughter, “Where is daddy’s nose? [dramatic pause…] There it is!” It wasn’t surprising that her first word was “nose.” Her sister, who is just starting to speak now didn’t get the same nose game. Her first word was a more traditional “daddy,” which is certainly fine by me. I’m told my own first word was “wall,” which is unexplainably weird. I got to wondering, what are the most common first baby words?

Experientially, “mommy” and “daddy” would be my first guesses. Infants are more likely to speak what they hear, after all. Or proper names, such as a big sister’s name, or the dog’s name. After surveying over 100 authoritative blogs, news articles, and surveys on the topic, there are some expected and unexpected results.

An Unscientific Study of the Most Common First Baby Words

From this fairly unscientific study, by far “dada” and “mama” steal the show, each showing up as the first word 2.6% of the time. Following that are B and D words: ball, bye, dog, and daddy. “Daddy” is a bit more common than “mommy.”

As far as I can tell, there’s no consensus on whether the consonant ‘M’ or the consonant ‘D’ is harder to say. ‘M’ requires breathing out air through your nose, while ‘D’ requires a bit more tongue work. Moms are also quick to point out that often babies don’t actually know to whom or what “daddy” refers. Rather, “daddy” is just a word that babies hear a lot.

(Note that the infographic above excludes several hundred words that just didn’t show up enough in our findings.)

Hearing the spoken word is the best way to help your child learn to speak. Any activity that involves speaking and listening to your child is helpful: reading books, singing together, and narrating what you’re doing. Speak slowly, clearly, and provide breaks to observe how your child is responding. If the baby makes a sound that seems word-like, provide encouragement a la Pavlov. If you show the baby you’re happy to hear it say “da da,” then the baby will continue saying “da da.”

Word Complexities

Of the set of uniquely reported first baby words, 4 letter ones are most common, as we can see from the distribution:

Very surprising was the long tail – what kid is saying 8- and 9-letter 3-syllable words first? The most common of these, which is also the only named product or brand on the list, is Cheerios. Well done for them.

Another interesting view of the data is seeing which first letters are most common – compare this to the relative frequencies of the first letters of words (in the English language), and you’ll see that amongst babies, B words are much more represented, and T words less.

First Baby Words, Most Common First Letters

One thing to consider as well, is that in many cases, parents will report, for example, that a baby’s first word is “that” whereas the baby is actually saying “dat.” According to speech pathologists, the “th” phoneme isn’t mastered until 7 years old.

Some other interesting resources: