Baby One More Time

Be My Baby

Baby I Love You

Baby Blue

Baby Baby

Baby It’s You

Baby Boy

Baby Come Back

…and so on. Why is baby (or babe) such a romantic word, that it would be featured in so many song titles like that? We’re so used to it, but if you step back and think about it, it’s a bit strange. There’s no obvious connection. Austrian ethnologist Konrad Lorenz suggested that babies’ cuteness was an evolutionary advantage, providing an incentive for adults to look after them. He believed that men sought similar signs of attraction in women, such as large eyes. Men calling women baby would therefore be a sign of this attraction. That seems a bit too easy though. Even if such an attraction did exist, it would be subconscious, so it would be unlikely that men would consciously refer to women as baby for that reason. And of course now baby is used across genders, though that’s probably more a sign of increased gender equality. Continue reading →