Latin Names and Terms for Family Members

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Updated on March 24, 2019

English kinship terms, although not completely transparent even to those who grew up using them, lack the complexity found in many other language systems. English speakers might struggle to determine whether someone is a cousin once removed or a second cousin, but we don't have to think twice about what the title is for a parent's sister. It doesn't matter if the parent is the father or the mother: the name is the same: 'aunt'. In Latin, we would have to know whether the aunt is on the father's side, an amita, or on the mother's, a matertera.

This is not restricted to kinship terms. In terms of the sounds a language makes, there is a compromise made between ease of articulation and ease of understanding. In the realm of vocabulary, the ease might be the ease of memorizing a small number of specialized terms vs the need of others to know to whom you're referring. Sibling is more general than sister or brother. In English, we have both, but only those. In other languages, there might be a term for an older sister or younger brother and maybe none for a sibling, which could be considered too general to be useful.

Source

Sandys, John Edwin, 1910. A Companion to Latin Studies. Cambridge University Press: London.

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Your Citation

Gill, N.S. "Latin Names and Terms for Family Members." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/latin-kinship-terms-for-roman-relationships-118368. Gill, N.S. (2023, April 5). Latin Names and Terms for Family Members. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/latin-kinship-terms-for-roman-relationships-118368 Gill, N.S. "Latin Names and Terms for Family Members." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/latin-kinship-terms-for-roman-relationships-118368 (accessed April 20, 2024).