▪ Jeffery1938: 74: »Fraenkel, Fremdw, 14, noted that it was an early loan word, and suggested that it came from the Aram bāḇâ which is in very common use in the Rabbinic writings. D. H. Müller, however (WZKM, i, 23), on the ground that bābā occurs very rarely in Syr and that the root is entirely lacking in Hbr, Eth, and Sab, suggested that it was an early borrowing from Mesopotamia (cf. Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdw, 30), and may have come directly into Ar. It occurs commonly in the old poetry, which confirms the theory of early borrowing, and it is noteworthy that from some Mesopotamian source it passed into mPers (Frahang, Glossary, p. 103; Herzfeld, Paikuli, Glossary, 151).«
▪ Schall1982, Retsö2006 (EALL, “Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords"): via Aram bāḇā from Akk bāb-um ‘gate’