In Aramaic, Abba was the most intimate term one could possibly call a father. The closest thing we have in English is a toddler using the name “Dada,” but that doesn’t quite do it because Abba wasn’t a cheesy name you used as a kid and then grew out of with age. It wasn’t a name you’d be embarrassed to be caught saying to your father as a twentysomething. It was a term of endearment from a son to a father that was lost in translation because it was so rarely used, or maybe so rarely needed. The Greeks didn’t have a term like Abba because no one would address their father with that much
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