Japanese has a lot of words for mother and unlike in English with mom, mommy and mother, they aren’t related.

The most common are okaasan (with a few variations of its own), haha and mama.

But mama is written with katakana suggesting it is a loan word. Which I find interesting in terms of the babble word theory.

It could also be katakana because it is considered derived from a sound like how onomatopoeia are often written in katakana, which would really support the babble theory.