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Kinship terminology is the system used inlanguages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related throughkinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology; for example, some languages distinguish betweenconsanguine andaffinal uncles (i.e. the brothers of one's parents and the husbands of the sisters of one's parents, respectively), whereas others have only one word to refer to both a father and his brothers. Kinship terminologies include the terms of address used in different languages or communities for different relatives and the terms of reference used to identify the relationship of these relatives to ego[1] or to each other.
AnthropologistLewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Though much of his work is now considered dated, he argued thatkinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions. For example, most kinship terminologies distinguish between sexes (the difference between a brother and a sister) and between generations (the difference between a child and a parent). Moreover, he argued, kinship terminologies distinguish between relatives by blood andmarriage (although recently some anthropologists have argued that many societies define kinship in terms other than blood).
However, Morgan also observed that different languages (and, by extension, societies) organize these distinctions differently. He proposed to describe kinship terms and terminologies as either descriptive orclassificatory. When a descriptive term is used, it can only represent one type of relationship between two people, while a classificatory term represents one of many different types of relationships. For example, the wordbrother in English-speaking societies indicates a son of the same parent; thus, English-speaking societies use the wordbrother as a descriptive term. A person's male first cousin could be the mother's brother's son, mother's sister's son, father's brother's son, father's sister's son, and so on; English-speaking societies therefore use the wordcousin as a classificatory term.
Morgan discovered that a descriptive term in one society can become a classificatory term in another society. For example, in some societies, one would refer to many different people as "mother" (the woman who gave birth to oneself, as well as her sister and husband's sister, and also one's father's sister). Moreover, some societies do not group together relatives which the English-speaking societies classify together. For example, some languages have no one-word equivalent tocousin, because different terms refer to one's mother's sister's children and to one's father's sister's children.
Using these different terms, Murdock identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies:
The diagram depicts a two-generation comparison of the six major kinship systems. Circles correspond to female relatives while triangles correspond to male ones. Relatives marked with the same non-gray color are called by the same kinship term (apart from sex-differentiation in the sibling/cousin generation, except where this becomes structurally-relevant under the Crow and Omaha systems).
Note that in some versions of the Crow and Omaha systems, the relatives shown as "cousin" in the Crow and Omaha boxes of the chart are actually referred to as either "son/daughter" or "nephew/niece" (different terms are used by male ego vs. female ego).
Also, in some languages with an Iroquois type of system, the relatives shown as "cousin" on the chart are referred to by the same terms used for "sister-in-law"/"brother-in-law" (since such cross-cousins — including remote classificatory cross-cousins — are preferred marriage partners). Similarly, the term for father's sister can be the same as that for mother-in-law, and the term for mother's brother the same as father-in-law.
The basic principles of Crow and Omaha terminologies are symmetrical and opposite, with Crow systems having a matrilineal emphasis and Omaha systems a patrilineal emphasis.
A unique set of kin-terms common in someAustralian Aboriginal languages are tri-relational—also called triangular, ternary, triadic and shared kin-terms—which encapsulate a set of relations between three distinct entities. Broadly, there are two kinds of tri-relational kin-terms. The more common is aDual Propositus Tri-relational Kin-term which has one referent whose relationship is defined with respect to two anchor points (propositi) and from which the relation between the twopropositi can be inferred. The less common areTri-relational Dyadic Terms which reference a pair of related entities which (i.e., this dyad) is in some way to singlepropositus.
Dual Propositus Tri-relational Kin-terms
Terms of this type can be found inMurrinh-patha andBininj Kunwok. The speaker and the addressee form two distinctpropositi (P) who have unique relations to the referent (R). An example in Murrinh-patha is the termyilamarna. This term refers to the speaker's brother, who is also the uncle of the addressee; it is therefore also encoded in this term that the addressee is the child of the speaker. The term could be elaborated thus:
In Bininj Kunwok, the kin-termnakurrng can be either a regular (i.e. bi-relational) or tri-relational kin-term depending on the context. In the case in the illustration, the difference marked by the position of the possessive pronounke which either marks the addressee as the solepropositus or allows for a tri-relational interpretation:
Tri-relational Dyadic Terms
In this kind of tri-relation, two referents (R1,R2) form a dyad via some relation (commonly marriage), and this dyad is in turn related to the speaker (thepropositus) in some way. An example of a tri-relational dyadic term can be found inGooniyandi.[2]Marralangi one way of referring to a husband and wife pair is specific to when either the husband or the wife is the opposite-sex sibling of the speaker. The denotation ofmarralangi is thus:
Australian Aboriginal languages tend to have extensive vocabularies for denoting kin-relations, including for referring to and addressing dyads and groups based on their relation to one another or to the speaker. For example, see below the complete inventory ofgroup kin-terms inBardi[4] (some but not all of these are assessed with respect to the speaker as well and may thus be considered tri-relational dyadic terms:
| Term | English Equivalent | Kin Denoted |
|---|---|---|
| aalabo | men’s and women’s children | mC + wC |
| aalagalag | group of children with their father | mC + F |
| aalamalarr | man’s wife and his children | W + mC |
| alabal | brothers and sisters-in-law | HZ + WB etc |
| jaalbola | cousins and brothers | FZC + B (etc) |
| birriigaarra | mother and her brother | M + MB (+MZ) |
| birriirrmoorroo | ‘aunties’ | M + FZ |
| irrmoorrgooloo | father and his sister | F + FZ |
| birriibo | mother and her children | M + wC |
| oombarnborla | same generation ‘brothers’ | B + B, FBS + FBS, etc |
| marrirborla | same generation ‘sisters’ | Z + Z |
| irrmoorrgool | father with his siblings | F + FB + FZ |
| gaarragooloo | uncles | F + MB |
| goligamarda | grandmothers | FM + MM |
| galoogaloongoordoo | grandfathers | FF + FF |
| jamoogamarda | grandparents | MF + MM |
| nyamigamarda | grandparents | MF + MM |
| gamardajamoo | grandparents | MM + MF |
| injalala | cross cousins | MBS + MBD, FZS + FSD (etc) |
| galoongoordinyarr | grandparents and grandchildren | FF + FFB + FFZ (etc), FF + SC (etc) |
| golinyarr | grandmother and grandchildren | FM + MFZ + FMB (etc); FM + SC (etc) |
| jamoonyarr | grandmother and grandchildren | MF + MFB (etc); MF + DC (etc) |
| gamardanyarr | grandmother with her grandchildren | MM + DC |
| aloorambarr | wife’s parents and their daughter-in-law | WM + WMB |
| oorambarr | WMB + WMBB | |
| anymanoonoo | mothers-in-law | DHM + SWM |
| orangan | in-laws | HM + SW |
| oomarloomarl(a) | man with wife’s brothers | ZH + WB |
The size of this dyadic kin-term inventory is not atypical of Australian languages. Though smaller, theDyirbal dyadic kin-term inventory is also extensive (e andy stand for elder and younger):[5]
| Term | Kin Denoted |
|---|---|
| gumbu-jirr | MM+DC |
| ngagi-jirr | MF+DC |
| babi-jirr | FM+SC |
| bulu-jirr | FF+SC |
| ngumay-girr | F+C FyB+eBC FyZ+eBC |
| gina-girr | M+C MyC+eZC MeZ+yZC MeB+yZC |
| ngalman-girr | B+Z B+B Z+Z |
| ngaybirr / mulba | H+W |
| dadiny-garra | WB+ZH HZ+BW etc. |
| dunggarr-jirr | MeBD+FyZD/S MeBS+FyZD/S |
InMurrinh-patha, nonsingular pronouns are differentiated not only by the gender makeup of the group, but also by the members' interrelation. If the members are in a sibling-like relation, a third pronoun (SIB) will be chosen distinct from the Masculine (MASC) and Feminine/Neuter (FEM).[6]
Some languages, such asKannada,Telugu,Tamil,Malayalam,Turkish,Sinhalese,Chinese (seeChinese kinship),Japanese,Korean,Khmer,Mongolian,Vietnamese,Tagalog (Filipino),Hungarian,Bulgarian,Nepalese,Navajo andNahuatl add another dimension to some relations: relative age. Rather than one term for "brother", there exist, for example, different words for "older brother" and "younger brother". In Tamil, an older male sibling is referred to asaṇṇā and a younger male sibling asthambi, whereas older and younger female siblings are calledakkā andthangai respectively.Languages which distinguish relative age may not have non-age relative kinship terms at all. In Vietnamese, all younger siblings are referred to with the ungendered termem, whereas older siblings are distinguished by sex:anh for males andchị for females.
Other languages, such asChiricahua, use the same terms of address for alternating generations. So Chiricahua children (male or female) call their paternal grandmother-ch’iné, and likewise this grandmother will call her son's children-ch’iné. Similar features are seen also inHuichol,[7][8] some descendant languages ofProto-Austronesian (e.g.Fordata,[9]Kei,[10] andYamdena[11]),[12]Bislama,[13] andUsarufa.[14] Terms that recognize alternating generations and the prohibition of marriage within one's own set of alternate generation relatives (0, ±2, ±4, etc.) are common inAustralian Aboriginal kinship.
The relative age and alternating-generations systems are combined in some languages. For instance,Tagalog borrows the relative age system of theChinese kinship and follows the generation system of kinship.Philippine kinship distinguishes between generation, age and in some cases, gender.
Floyd Lounsbury described[15] a possible seventh, Dravidian, type of terminological system; there is on-going discussion on whether this system is a sub-type of Iroquois or whether it is a distinct system that had been conflated with Iroquois in Morgan’s typology of kin-term systems. Both systems distinguish relatives by marriage from relatives by descent, although both areclassificatory categories rather than being based on biological descent. The basic idea is that of applying an even/odd distinction to relatives that takes into account the gender of every linking relative for ego’s kin relation to any given person. A MFBD(C), for example, is a mother’s father’s brother’s daughter’s child. If each female link (M,D) is assigned a 0 and each male (F,B) a 1, the number of 1s is either even or odd; in this case, even. However, variant criteria exist.[16][17][18] In a Dravidian system with a patrilinealmodulo-2 counting system, marriage is prohibited with this relative, and a marriageable relative must be modulo-2 odd. There exists also a version of this logic with a matrilineal bias. Discoveries of systems that use modulo-2 logic, as in South Asia, Australia, and many other parts of the world, marked a major advance in the understanding of kinship terminologies that differ from kin relations and terminologies employed by Europeans.
The Dravidian kinship system involves selective cousinhood. One's father's brother's children and one's mother's sister's children arenot cousins but brothers and sisters one step removed. They are consideredconsanguineous (pangali in Tamil), and marriage with them is strictly forbidden as incestuous. However, one's father's sister's children and one's mother's brother's children are considered cousins and potential mates (muraicherugu in Tamil). Marriages between such cousins are allowed and encouraged. There is a clear distinction betweencross cousins, who are one's true cousins andparallel cousins, who are, in fact, siblings.
Like Iroquois people, Dravidians use the same words to refer to their father's sister and mother-in-law (atthai in Tamil,atthe in Kannada, andattha oratthayya in Telugu) and their mother's brother and father-in-law (maamaa in Tamil,maava in Kannada, andmaavayya in Telugu). In Kannada, distinction between these relationships may be made becausesodara is added beforeatthe andmaava to specifically refer to one's father's sister and mother's brother respectively, although this term is not used in direct address. In Tamil, however, only one's mother's brother is captioned withthaai beforemaamaa because of the honor accorded this relationship.
The genealogical terminology used in many genealogical charts describes relatives of the subject in question. Using the abbreviations below, genealogical relationships may be distinguished by single or compound relationships, such as BC for a brother's children, MBD for a mother's brother's daughter, and so forth.