Meaning

originPossibly an alteration of brother or bub, said by a young child not yet able to pronounce brother properly, but note similar terms in other Germanic languages derived from Proto-Germanic *bō-, *bō-, such as West Frisian bobbe, German Bube (“boy”), dialectal Swedish babbe (“little boy”), English babe, Dutch boef (“mischievous lad, rascal”), Middle Low German bōve, and Icelandic bófi. Also compare…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0