In thelineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, aniece ornephew is a child of an individual'ssibling orsibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblingsaunt oruncle. The gender-neutral termnibling has been used in place of the common terms, especially in specialist literature.^[1]

As aunt/uncle and niece/nephew are separated by one generation, they are an example of asecond-degree relationship. Unless related by marriage, they are 25% or morerelated by blood if the aunt/uncle is a fullsibling of one of the parents, or 12.5% if they are ahalf-sibling.

The word nephew is derived from theFrench wordneveu which is derived from theLatinnepos.^[2] The termnepotism, meaning familial loyalty, is derived from this Latin term.^[3]Niece enteredMiddle English from theOld French wordnece, which also derives from Latinnepotem.^[4] The wordnibling, derived fromsibling, is aneologism suggested bySamuel Martin in 1951 as a cover term for "nephew or niece"; it is not common outside of specialist literature.^[1] Sometimes in discussions involving analytic material or in abstract literature, terms such asmale nibling andfemale nibling are preferred to describe nephews and nieces respectively.^[5] Terms such asnibling are also sometimes viewed as agender-neutral alternative to terms which may be viewed as perpetuating the overgenderization of the English language;^[6] it can also be used likewise to refer tonon-binary relatives.^[7]

These French-derived terms displaced theMiddle Englishnyfte,nift,nifte, fromOld Englishnift, fromProto-Germanic*niftiz ('niece'); and theMiddle Englishneve,neave, fromOld Englishnefa, fromProto-Germanic*nefô ('nephew').^{[8][9][10][11]}

Traditionally, a nephew was the logical recipient of his uncle'sinheritance if the latter did not have a successor. A nephew might have more rights of inheritance than the uncle's daughter.^[12][13]

In social environments that lacked a stable home or environments such as refugee situations, uncles and fathers would equally be assigned responsibility for their sons and nephews.^[14]

Among parents, some cultures have assigned equal status in their social status to daughters and nieces. This is, for instance, the case in Indian communities inMauritius,^[15] and the ThaiNakhon Phanom Province, where the transfer of cultural knowledge such as weaving was distributed equally among daughters, nieces and nieces-in-law by the Tai So community,^[16] and someGarifuna people that would transmit languages to their nieces.^[17] In some proselytizing communities the termniece was informally extended to include non-related younger female community members as a form of endearment.^[18] Among some tribes in Manus Province of Papua New Guinea, women's roles as sisters, daughters and nieces may have taken precedence over their marital status in social importance.^[19]

• Agrandnephew orgrandniece is the grandson or granddaughter of one's sibling.^[20] Also calledgreat-nephew /great-niece.^[21]
• Ahalf-niece orhalf-nephew is the child of one's half-sibling,related by 12.5%.^[22][23]

In some cultures and family traditions, it is common to refer tocousins with one or more removals to a newer generation using some form of the word niece or nephew. For more information seecousin.

• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911)."Nephew" .Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 384.
• Lancaster, F. M. (October 2005)."Types of Collateral Relationships - Uncle/Aunt Nephew/Niece".Genetic and Quantitative Aspects of Genealogy. Retrieved25 June 2016.
• Dictionary.com, "nephew," in Dictionary.com Unabridged. Source location: Random House, Inc. Available:Dictionary.com Is The World's Favorite Online Dictionary. Retrieved: January 1, 2011