Family

:This article is about the human domestic group. For other uses, see Family (disambiguation).

English kinship terminology

Most Western societies employ Eskimo Kinship terminology. This kinship terminology is common in societies based on conjugal (or nuclear) families, where nuclear families must be relatively mobile.

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Members of the nuclear family use descriptive kinship terms:

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• Mother: the female parent
• Father: the male parent
• Son: the males born of the mother; sired by the father
• Daughter: the females born of the mother; sired by the father
• Brother: a male born of the same mother; sired by the same father
• Sister: a female born of the same mother; sired by the same father

It is generally assumed that the mother's husband is also the genitor. In some families, a woman may have children with more than one man or a man may have children with more than one woman. Children who share one parent but not another are called "half-brothers" or "half-sisters." Children who do not share parents, but whose parents are married, are called "step-brothers" or "step-sisters."

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If a person is married to the parent of a child, but is not the parent of the child themselves, then they are the "step-parent" of the child, either the "stepmother" or "stepfather". Children who are adopted into a family are generally called by the same terms as children born into the family.

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Typically, societies with conjugal families also favor neolocal residence; thus upon marriage a person separates from the nuclear family of their childhood (family of orientation) and forms a new nuclear family (family of procreation). This practice means that members of one's own nuclear family were once members of another nuclear family, or may one day become members of another nuclear family.

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Members of the nuclear families of members of one's own nuclear family may be lineal or collateral. When they are lineal, they are referred to in terms that build on the terms used within the nuclear family:

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• Grandfather: a parent's father
• Grandmother: a parent's mother
• Grandson: a child's son
• Granddaughter: a child's daughter

When they are collateral, they are referred to in more classificatory terms that do not build on the terms used within the nuclear family:

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• Uncle: father's brother, father's sister's husband, mother's brother, mother's sister's husband
• Aunt: father's sister, father's brother's wife, mother's sister, mother's brother's wife
• Nephew: sister's sons, brother's sons
• Niece: sister's daughters, brother's daughters

When separated by additional generations (in other words, when one's collateral relatives belong to the same generation as one's grandparents or grandchildren), these terms are modified by the prefix "great".

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Most collateral relatives were never members of the nuclear family of the members of one's own nuclear family.

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• Cousin: the most classificatory term; the children of aunts or uncles. Cousins may be further distinguished by degree of collaterality and generation. Two persons of the same generation who share a grandparent are "first cousins" (one degree of collaterality); if they share a great-grandparent they are "second cousins" (two degrees of collaterality) and so on. If the shared ancestor is the grandparent of one individual and the great-grandparent of the other, the individuals are said to be "first cousins once removed" (removed by one generation); if the shared ancestor is the grandparent of one individual and the great-great-grandparent of the other, the individuals are said to be "first cousins twice removed" (removed by two generations), and so on. Similarly, if the shared ancestor is the great-grandparent of one person and the great-great-grandparent of the other, the individuals are said to be "second cousins once removed."

Distant cousins of an older generation (in other words, one's parents' first cousins) are technically first cousins once removed, but are often classified with "aunts" and "uncles".

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Similarly, a person may refer to close friends of one's parents as "aunt" or "uncle," or may refer to close friends as "brother" or "sister". This practice is called fictive kinship.

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Relationships by marriage, except for wife/husband, are qualified by the term "-in-law". The mother and father of one's spouse are one's mother-in-law and father-in-law; the spouse of one's son or daughter is one's son-in-law or daughter-in-law.

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The term "sister-in-law" refers to three essentially different relationships, either the wife of one's brother, of the sister of one's spouse, or the wife of one's spouse's sibling. "Brother-in-law" is similarly ambiguous. There are no special terms for the rest of one's spouse's family.

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Specific distinctions vary among Western societies. For instance, in French, the prefix beau- or belle- is used for both "-in-law" and "step-"; in other words, one's belle-soeur could be the sister of one's spouse, the wife of one's sibling, the wife of one's spouse's sibling, or the daughter of one's parent's spouse. In Spanish, each of the roles that English creates with the suffix "-in-law" has a different word (suegros- parents-in-law, yerno-son-in-law, nuera-daughter-in-law, cuñados-siblings-in-law), but there is a suffix -astro or -astra that is equivalent to "step-". In Swedish, terms for grandparents differ on the side of the parents, i.e., "farfar" and "farmor" (father-father, father-mother) vs. "mormor" and "morfar" (mother-mother, mother-father). There is also a term, "half-sibling" (and -brother, -sister) for siblings with whom one shares only one parent.

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