Look up niece in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up nephew in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of an individual's sibling or sibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblings aunt or uncle. The gender-neutral term nibling has been used in place of the common terms, especially in specialist literature.[1]

As aunt/uncle and niece/nephew are separated by one generation, they are an example of a second-degree relationship. They are 25% related by blood, unless related by marriage.

Lexicology

The word nephew is derived from the French word neveu which is derived from the Latin nepos.[2] The term nepotism, meaning familial loyalty, is derived from this Latin term.[3] Niece entered Middle English from the Old French word nece, which also derives from Latin nepotem.[4] The word nibling, derived from sibling, is a neologism suggested by Samuel Martin in 1951 as a cover term for "nephew or niece"; it is not common outside of specialist literature.[1] Sometimes in discussions involving analytic material or in abstract literature, terms such as male nibling and female nibling are preferred to describe nephews and nieces respectively.[5] Terms such as nibling are also sometimes viewed as a gender-neutral alternative to terms which may be viewed as perpetuating the overgenderization of the English language.[6]

These French-derived terms displaced the Middle English nyfte, nift, nifte, from Old English nift, from Proto-Germanic *niftiz (“niece”); and the Middle English neve, neave, from Old English nefa, from Proto-Germanic *nefô (“nephew”).[7][8][9][10]

Culture

Traditionally, a nephew was the logical recipient of his uncle's inheritance if the latter did not have a successor. A nephew might have more rights of inheritance than the uncle's daughter.[11][12]

In social environments that lacked a stable home or environments such as refugee situations, uncles and fathers would equally be assigned responsibility for their sons and nephews.[13]

Among parents, some cultures have assigned equal status in their social status to daughters and nieces. This is, for instance, the case in Indian communities in Mauritius,[14] and the Thai Nakhon Phanom Province, where the transfer of cultural knowledge such as weaving was distributed equally among daughters, nieces and nieces-in-law by the Tai So community,[15] and some Garifuna people that would transmit languages to their nieces.[16] In some proselytizing communities the term niece was informally extended to include non-related younger female community members as a form of endearment.[17] Among some tribes in Manus Province of Papua New Guinea, women's roles as sisters, daughters and nieces may have taken precedence over their marital status in social importance.[18]

Additional terms

  • A grandnephew or grandniece is the grandson or granddaughter of one's sibling.[19] Also called great-nephew / great-niece.[20]
  • A half-niece or half-nephew is the child of one's half-sibling, related by 12.5%.[21][22]

In some cultures and family traditions, it is common to refer to cousins with one or more removals to a newer generation using some form of the word niece or nephew. For more information see cousin.

References

  1. 1 2 Conklin, Harold C. (1964). "Ethnogenealogical method". In Ward Hunt Goodenough (ed.). Explorations in Cultural Anthropology: Essays in Honor of George Peter Murdock. McGraw-Hill. p. 35.
  2. ↑ "Online Etymology Dictionary". etymonline.com. Douglas Harper. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
  3. ↑ Meakins, Felicity (2016). Loss and Renewal: Australian Languages Since Colonisation. p. 91.
  4. ↑ "niece, n.". OED Online. Oxford University Press. June 2016. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  5. ↑ Keen, Ian. "Definitions of kin." Journal of Anthropological Research 41.1 (1985): 62-90.
  6. ↑ Hill, Jane H., and Kenneth C. Hill. "Culture Influencing Language: Plurals of Hopi Kin Terms in Comparative Uto‐Aztecan Perspective." Journal of linguistic Anthropology 7.2 (1997): 166-180.
  7. ↑ Buck, Carl Darling (3 July 2008). A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226228860 – via Google Books.
  8. ↑ Ringe, Donald (31 August 2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic: A Linguistic History of English. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191536335 – via Google Books.
  9. ↑ Jones, William Jervis (19 March 1990). German kinship terms, 750-1500: documentation and analysis. W. de Gruyter. ISBN 9780899255736 – via Google Books.
  10. ↑ Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (19 March 1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781884964985 – via Google Books.
  11. ↑ Stahl, Anne (2007). Victims who Do Not Cooperate with Law Enforcement in Domestic Violence Incidents. p. 19.
  12. ↑ Chakraborty, Eshani. "Marginality, Modes of insecurity and Indigenous Women of Northern Bangladesh" (PDF). calternatives.org. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
  13. ↑ Atlani, Laàtitia; Rousseau, C…Cile (2000). "The Politics of Culture in Humanitarian Aid to Women Refugees Who Have Experienced Sexual Violence". Transcultural Psychiatry. McGill University. 37 (3): 435–449. doi:10.1177/136346150003700309. S2CID 146534532.
  14. ↑ Hazareesingh, K. (January 1966). "Comparative Studies in Society and History — The Religion and Culture of Indian Immigrants in Mauritius and the Effect of Social Change — Cambridge Journals Online". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 8 (2): 241–257. doi:10.1017/S0010417500004023. S2CID 144617688. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  15. ↑ "Knowledge Management on Local Wisdom of Tai-so Community Weaving Culture in Phone Sawan District, Nakhon Phanom Province" (PDF). Npu.ac.th. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  16. ↑ "Language transmission in a Garifuna community: Challenging current notions about language death". Dialnet.unirioja.es. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  17. ↑ "Divine Domesticities : Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific". Oapen.org. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  18. ↑ Gustaffson, Berit (1999). Traditions and Modernities in Gender Roles: Transformations in Kinship and Marriage Among the M'Buke from Manus Province. p. 7.
  19. ↑ "Definition of Grandnephew by Merriam-Webster". merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  20. ↑ "Definition of Great-nephew by Merriam-Webster". merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  21. ↑ "Definition Of Half Niece by Merriam-Webster". merriam-webster.com. Merriam-webster. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  22. ↑ "Definition Of Half Nephew by Merriam-Webster". merriam-webster.com. Merriam-webster. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
Look up niece, nephew, or nibling in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.