42 articles
Matrilineality
Matrilineality: kinship descent, inheritance, and belonging traced through the female line (matriliny), as among the Minangkabau, Khasi, Mosuo, and Akan. Distinct from matriarchy; often paired with matrilocal or avunculocal residence and mother's-brother inheritance.
Next of kin
Next of kin means the people with the nearest legally acknowledged relation to someone, notified after death and often asked to make basic decisions on their behalf.
Niece and nephew
Niece and nephew are English kinship terms for a sibling's daughter and son, from Latin neptis and nepos via Old French; both once meant grandchild before narrowing in the 1600s; second-degree relatives sharing about 25% of DNA; gender-neutral term nibling.
Parent-in-law
Parent-in-law: the father-in-law or mother-in-law, the parent of one's spouse. An affinal (marriage-created) kin relation, traced etymologically to Canon Law via brother-in-law (13c.) and PIE swekuros.
Philippine kinship
Philippine kinship, the bilateral (cognatic) family reckoning system of the Philippines, also called Malayan-type kinship. Descent traced equally through both parents; generation-based, weakly sex-differentiated terminology; compadrazgo godparenthood; regional variation including segmentary lineal-like organization in the Islamic south.
Senpai and kōhai
Senpai (先輩) and kōhai (後輩) are Japanese senior–junior relationship roles based on time of entry into a school, company, or club, not age or rank; same-year members are doki. Central to Japanese hierarchy, language use, and mentoring, with related forms in China and Korea.
Sibling
Sibling: a brother or sister sharing at least one parent, including full, half, step, and adoptive siblings. 82.22% of US youth lived with a sibling in 2010; warmth, low conflict, and equal treatment predict better mental health.
Sibling-in-law
Sibling-in-law: a relative of one's generation connected by marriage, either a spouse's sibling or a sibling's spouse; gendered forms brother-in-law and sister-in-law; extended sense covers a spouse's sibling's spouse (co-sibling-in-law).
Storge (στοργή)
Storge (στοργή) is the Ancient Greek word for natural, instinctive family affection, from the verb stergo; rare in antiquity, absent as a simple noun from the New Testament, and popularized by C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves.
Uncle
Uncle: in English, the brother of a parent and, by extension, the husbands of parent's sisters. The word's coverage across kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Sudanese, Crow, Omaha) shows how languages merge or distinguish father's brother, mother's brother, and affinal uncles.
Westermarck effect
The Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting, is the hypothesized sexual aversion between people raised together in early childhood, proposed by Edvard Westermarck in 1891, opposed by Freud, and tested through Taiwan minor marriages and Israeli kibbutzim.
Xhosa clan names
Xhosa clan names (iziduko, singular isiduko; also isibongo) are patrilineal kinship names of the Xhosa people of South Africa's Eastern Cape, passed father to son, governing marriage exogamy, attached to praise poems, and among some clans (abeLungu) tracing to non-African forebears.