Mum, mam, mummy, ma – how people refer to their mother is usually up to them – until it comes to buying a Mother’s Day card. Dani Webb investigates.

CARD shops and stalls in early spring are a mass of pink, with fluffy bunnies, cuddly kittens and even zany guinea pigs being used to proclaim affection for mothers.

The greetings are largely offered to “mum”, but buyers in the North-East and North Yorkshire who want a “mam”

card seem to be struggling to lay their hands on one.

Some retailers are selling out of “mam” cards as fast as they can order them, while others have resort to designing their own to meet demand.

Another extreme has seen people make a DIY alteration to their card, changing mum to mam with a pen, to make up for the lack of choice.

The relative lack of cards using “mam” could also be seen as another example of the North- South divide, with the Northern dialect being overlooked in favour of the more popular Southern alternative.

Some shops only have one or two choices of mam cards because of a lack of availability, while other businesses make it their priority to have a better selection.

Tracy Liddle, owner of Card Shark, in Darlington Indoor Market, said: “We have a lot of demand for mam cards.

“They are very popular, but we have to go out of our way to get them printed because not all of our suppliers do them.

“We get asked for them all the time and we sell an awful lot.

Probably about 30 per cent of the cards we are selling at the moment are mam cards.”

Card supplier Hallmark believes the option of personlised cards on the internet means shoppers can always get what they need.

A spokesman said: “There is definitely more mum cards as this is the most popular, but we do sell mam cards. Year-on-year, we look at what is selling and get feedback from the supermarkets and shops to make sure we have got enough of the right cards on offer.”

Dr Michael Pearce, a senior lecturer in English Language at Sunderland University, said: “I think card companies are missing out here. There ought to be a market for regional versions of greetings cards.

“If you have always called your nearest and dearest mam, it just seems wrong to have to use mum.”