Family

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

Kinship terminology

A kinship terminology is a specific system of familial relationships. The now rather dated anthropologist Louis Henry Morgan argued that kinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions. For example, most kinship terminologies distinguish between sexes (this is the difference between a brother and a sister) and between generation (this is the difference between a child and a parent). Moreover, he argued, kinship terminologies distinguish between relatives by blood and marriage (although recently some anthropologists have argued that many societies define kinship in terms other than "blood").

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But Morgan also observed that different languages (and thus, societies) organize these distinctions differently. He thus proposed to describe kin terms and terminologies as either descriptive or classificatory. "Descriptive" terms refer to only one type of relationship, while "classificatory" terms refer to many types of relationships. Most kinship terminologies include both descriptive and classificatory terms. For example, in Western societies there is only one way to be related to one's brother (brother = parents' son); thus, in Western society, brother is a descriptive term. But there are many ways to be related to one's cousin (cousin = mother's brother's son, mother's sister's son, father's brother's son, father's sister's son, and so on); thus, in Western society, "cousin" is a classificatory term.

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Morgan discovered that what may be a descriptive term in one society can be a classificatory term in another society. For example, in some societies there are many different people that one would call "mother" (the woman of whom one was born, as well as her sister and husband's sister, and also one's father's sister). Moreover, some societies do not lump together relatives that the West classifies together (in other words, in some languages there is no word for cousin because mother's sister's children and father's sister's children are referred to in different terms).

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Armed with these different terms, Morgan identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies:

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• Hawaiian: the most classificatory; only distinguishes between sex and generation.
• Sudanese: the most descriptive; no two relatives are referred to by the same term.
• Eskimo: has both classificatory and descriptive terms; in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between lineal relatives (who are related directly by a line of descent) and collateral relatives (who are related by blood, but not directly in the line of descent). Lineal relatives have highly descriptive terms, collateral relatives have highly classificatory terms.
• Iroquois: has both classificatory and descriptive terms; in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between siblings of opposite sexes in the parental generation. Siblings of the same sex are considered blood relatives, but siblings of the opposite sex are considered relatives by marriage. Thus, one's mother's sister is also called mother, and one's father's brother is also called father; however, one's mother's brother is called father-in-law, and one's father's sister is called mother-in-law.
• Crow: like Iroquois, but further distinguishes between mother's side and father's side. Relatives on the mother's side of the family have more descriptive terms, and relatives on the father's side have more classificatory terms.
• Omaha: like Iroquois, but further distinguishes between mother's side and father's side. Relatives on the mother's side of the family have more classificatory terms, and relatives on the father's side have more descriptive terms.

Societies in different parts of the world and using different languages may share the same basic terminology; in such cases it is very easy to translate the kinship terms of one language into another, although connatations may vary. But it is usually impossible to translate directly the kinship terms of a society that uses one system into the language of a society that uses a different system.

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Some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian, add another dimension to some relations: relative age. There are, e.g., different words for "older brother" and "younger brother." Thus, although Westerners may naturally agree with Morgan that "brother" is descriptive rather than classificatory, speakers of these languages might disagree.

Related Topics:
Chinese - Japanese - Hungarian

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