Amah (occupation)
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An amah (Portuguese: ama, German: Amme, Medieval Latin: amma, simplified Chinese: 阿妈; traditional Chinese: 阿媽; pinyin: ā mā; Wade–Giles: a¹ ma¹) or ayah (Portuguese: aia, Latin: avia, Tagalog: yaya) is a girl or woman employed by a family to clean, look after children, and perform other domestic tasks. Amah is the usual version in East Asia, while ayah relates more to South Asia, and tends to specifically mean a nursemaid looking after young children, rather than a general maid.
Role
It is a
Ayahs have been identified as a distinctive occupational group in India from the late eighteenth century, becoming the mainstay of childcare work during the periods of Company rule in India and the British Raj, as colonial wives and therefore children became more prevalent.[1][2] Joanna de Silva, a native of Bengal, possibly of part Portuguese descent, was an early example of an ayah who travelled to Britain with her charges, and, more rarely, had her portrait painted by William Wood in 1792.[3][4]
A rare written and signed agreement between Mina Ayah of 15 Free School Street, Calcutta, an Indian ayah and a British family, the Greenhills, was signed in 1896, and survives in the British Library. It lays out the terms of services for the voyage to Britain looking after two children, and Mina Ayah's return "£10.0.0. for my return passage unless Mrs Greenhill finds me a lady to return with".[5]
Ayahs also worked in Singapore, Indian and Malay ayahs during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. By the 1930s, Chinese amahs were more prevalent in the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong.
The Indian and Chinese women were employed in households in South and South-East Asia and also accompanied British families, and children travelling without their parents, across the seas between Asia, Europe, and Australia.[1]
In Hong Kong the word yaya became more common, by the 2010s, as Filipinas became domestic workers in that territory.[6]
Etymology
The word amah may have originated from the
Variants such as Amah-chieh or mahjeh (姐; jiě means elder sister in Chinese dialects) have also been used in some countries.
Other meanings
During the
In English literature
Amah and ayah have been adopted as
- She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib [her mother] would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.
- When Tony and his sister arrived they wanted to go straight to the pond, but their ayah said they must take a sharp walk first, and as she said this she glanced at the time-board to see when the Gardens closed that night.
- J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan
See also
- Ayahs' Home, an organisation that provided accommodation and support to foreign nannies abandoned in London
References
- ^ a b "Ayahs and Amahs". Ayahs and Amahs. 2020-10-26. Retrieved 2022-05-07.
- ISSN 1363-3554.
- ^ "Joanna de Silva". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2022-05-07.
- ^ "She Travelled: The Portrait of Joanna de Silva, the Indian Ayah at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York". Ayahs and Amahs. 2021-11-11. Retrieved 2022-05-07.
- ^ "Agreement with Mina Ayah". blogs.bl.uk. Retrieved 2022-10-18.
- ^ Lim, Lisa (2016-11-04). "Where Hong Kong got 'amah', old word for maidservant, from". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2022-06-06.
- ^ ISBN 978-9004251366.
- ^ ISBN 978-0801473234.
- ^ https://servantspasts.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/first-blog-post/ In India, ayah is the more common variant, and this Anglo-Indian word originated from the Portuguese aia meaning "nurse", feminine form of aio meaning "tutor". "Ayah". Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original on January 22, 2014.
Further reading
- Suzanne E Cahill Transcendence & Divine Passion. The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8047-2584-5