妈mā

妈 (mā, "mother") is a modern character that did not exist in classical Chinese — it emerged in the Song dynasty as a phonetic compound of the woman radical 女 and the phonetic element 马. The traditional form 媽 is identical in structure, preserving the elegant pairing of "woman" with "horse" that gives the character its sound. While 母 (mǔ) served as the ancient word for mother, 妈 developed as a more intimate, colloquial form that eventually became the standard term in modern Mandarin.