Kin Naming Systems: Part 1
All societies have standard kinship names for specific categories of relatives. For example, both ego's father's sister and mother's sister are usually referred to as aunt in North America. Ego obviously knows the difference between the aunts, but it is not important to assign different terms of reference for them. Such kin terms are valuable clues to the nature of a kinship system in a society as well as to the social statuses and roles.
The most common kin naming pattern in North America and Europe today is known as the Eskimo
system. Members of the nuclear family are given terms of reference based only on their gender and generation (in the diagram below 1 = father, 2 = mother, 5 = brother, and 6 = sister). No other relative is referred to by any of these terms.
Aunts and uncles are distinguished from parents in the Eskimo system and separated only by gender (3 = aunt and 4 = uncle). The spouses of aunts and uncles may also be given these kin terms. All cousins are lumped together (7 = cousin). No kinship distinction is made between uncles, aunts, and cousins with regard to side of the family. For instance, there is no kin term for aunts on the mother's side of the family in contrast to those on the father's side--they are all called aunt.
The Eskimo kin naming system is found mainly in societies that use the bilateral principle of descent and that strongly emphasize the nuclear family over more distant kinsmen. Both ego's mother's and father's collateral relatives are considered equally important. That is to say, no distinction is made between relatives on the mother's and father's side of the family. This is reflected in the kin names. However, despite the fact that some relatives are lumped together with the same linguistic terms in the
Eskimo and other kin naming systems, people do make distinctions between them as unique individuals.
Anthropologists have discovered that there are only six basic kin naming systems used by almost all of the thousands of cultures of the world. The Eskimo system is one of the simplest, despite the fact that it is found among some of the most technologically complex societies. It is also found among hunters and gatherers living in harsh environments, such as the Inuit, or Eskimo. In both of these extremes, the common denominator for the Eskimo kin naming system is an economy that forces the nuclear family to be mostly independent.
The least complex kin naming pattern is found in the Hawaiian
Similarly, all brothers and male cousins are linked by giving them the same kin term (3). Sisters and all female cousins are also referred to by the same term (4). Not surprisingly, marriage of cousins is generally forbidden since they are treated like brothers and sisters.
The Hawaiian terminological system is found widely in the islands of Polynesia. It is usually associated with ambilineal descent. Since both sides of the family are treated equally, an individual's choice of ancestral line to trace is less biased.
Polynesian woman
from Tonga
At the opposite extreme in complexity is the Sudanese
The Sudanese system is found in Sudan, Turkey, and some other societies with patrilineal descent and considerable social complexity. The fine distinctions made between kinsmen mirrors the society's desire to distinguish people on the basis of class, occupation, and political power.
Turkish woman
This page was last updated on Thursday, August 15, 2002.
Copyright © 1997-2002 by Dennis O'Neil. All rights reserved.
Illustration credits
