Kinship Terms Around the World (and Why Your Cousins Aren't Only Cousins)

Cousin: one word, many meanings

In English, your mother's brother's daughter and your father's sister's son share a label. Many languages don't blur these. Arabic, for example, has distinct terms for each of the four cousin types. Mandarin has eight. Hawaiian uses the same word for siblings and parallel cousins because the culture treats them the same way in daily life.

Why this matters for your tree

When you're recording oral history in a multilingual family, the words carry information English drops. "خالتي" isn't just "my aunt" — it's specifically "my mother's sister." Capturing the original term tells the next generation something English would have erased.

A minimal practice

In your tree's person profile, use the bio field to record how the subject was addressed by the rest of the family, in the family's own language. It's a small act of precision that future descendants will thank you for.