How to call your relations
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In the last few years I've noticed a number of apps that can be used to figure out the proper terms to refer to your relations in Chinese. Of course, this is a problem in all languages. For example, who is your "second cousin twice removed"? Some people care about these things and are good at figuring them out. For Chinese, these are particularly important matters, but younger generations are becoming increasingly ill adept at using the correct, precise terms of address. Hence the felt need for (digital) tools to assist one in determining the proper address for your relatives.
For example, what do I call "wǒ de māmā de dìdì de nǚ'ér 我的媽媽的弟弟的女兒" (my mother's younger brother's daughter")? Answer: she is my "jiù biǎojiě/jiù biǎomèi 舅表姐／舅表妹", depending on whether she is older or younger than me.
I sense a certain kind of angst about not being confident concerning how to address one's relatives. There are several reasons for this. First is that the nuclear family has broken up and extended families no longer live together or in close proximity, so members no longer have the frequent opportunity to talk to each other in person. Second, in past times, it was unthinkable for family members to address each other by their given / personal name; they were required by stern custom to call each other by their relational term, e.g., "shěnshen 嬸嬸 " ("father's brother's wife"), instead of "Xiùzhī 秀芝".
If you want to see how complicated terms of address for Chinese relationships (qīnqī guānxì 親戚關係) can be, take a gander at this chart. It takes into account the description of the kinship in question, the formal title, the popular term used to designate the relationship, variants and alternatives, and the proper term for referring to oneself when addressing the person in question (e.g., avoid "wǒ 我" ["I"], instead say "sūn / sūnnǚ 孫/孫女" ["grandson/granddaughter"]).
The complexity of Chinese kinship terms is multiplied countless times according to topolects and sociolects.
Here's a kinship "calculator" for Android. For a demo, click "Trailer".
Selected readings
- "Know your relatives in Chinese" (6/1/23)
- "Double cousins?" (4/13/06)
[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]
~flow said,
January 30, 2025 @ 10:07 pm
These hypertrophic kinship term systems are one thing in language that can, as far as I'm concerned, just crash and burn and turn to ashes for good, never looking back. As an aside, one has to wonder how real the full-fledged systems are and to what degree they're the result of a native language 'construction game', not unlike the English collective nouns for animals where a certain reasonable core system of terms was intentionally blown up to ridiculous proportions and was apparently never meant to be part of ordinary people's vocabulary but had to be taught explicitly, thus also marking class distinctions. I also reject overblown kinship term systems on the ground that they monopolize family ties—and, among these, especially the 'blood lines'—as the one way to have interpersonal relationships at the expense of every other way a human being can enter into meaningful relationships with other individuals.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 31, 2025 @ 3:45 am
I think these processes are just a result of urbanization and a switch from a rural situation where you do know everybody to an urban situation where you haven't even met your neighbours, let alone know them. And from a situation where your next-of-kin are a life insurance policy to a situation where old-age care is taken care of by the state.
In my East European L1, we used to have more detailed terms for e.g. the siblings of your parents and spouses. Over the last century, there has been a switch from a 70% rural — 30% urban distribution to an exact opposite. No one knows these older terms any more, and we're left with one term for each relation. China seems to be following suit.
And of course the changing social situation is producing more fine-grained terminology elsewhere, e.g. for relationship statuses on facebook etc., LGBTQI+ people etc. etc. One could easily argue that "it's complicated" for a relationship status or the "+" in the latter are analogues of the large kinship system terms of yesteryear.
We'll see where this takes us. I've been struck how, in discussions of Trump's deportation policies, you tend to hear (at least in my limited experience) the term abuela a lot. Seeing that a large proportion of the incoming populations in the US and Europe come from more family-oriented places, you may expect more of this.
Philip Taylor said,
January 31, 2025 @ 5:06 am
"How to call your relations" would, in British English, be "What to call your relations" — the answer to "How to call …" would be "the telephone", "on Zoom", etc., rather than idioms such as jiù biǎojiě/jiù biǎomè.
Andreas Johansson said,
January 31, 2025 @ 7:25 am
One aspect of English shall seemingly never get entirely comfortable with is the use of "grandfather/mother" for both "father's father/mother" and "mother's father/mother". I often find myself specifying with paternal or maternal even when it makes no particular difference to what I'm saying.
Philip Taylor said,
January 31, 2025 @ 7:58 am
An afterthough to my earlier comment — in British English, one would, however, say "How to address one's relations" and never "What to address one's relations". So perhaps <Br.E> "address" ≡ <Am.E> "call".
To Andreas : I frequently speak of "my paternal grandmother" (etc), as I am invariably speaking of a single individual, never of the set of grandmothers (cardinality = 2).
Keith Ivey said,
January 31, 2025 @ 10:45 am
Philip Taylor, as an American I would agree with your word usages there, so I don't think there's a transatlantic difference, at least not a widespread one. I think this may be more about Mair English than American or British.
katarina said,
February 1, 2025 @ 6:28 pm
Thank you, Professor Mair, for the wonderful chart of names of family relationships and terms of address ! Just what I have needed. I remember reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" (Hong Lou Meng), a novel about a very large family, many years ago in Chinese and telling an elder in my family "I enjoy it very much but I just can't get all the family relationships straight," and got the stern response, "Well, you MUST get all the family relationships straight ! "
I wonder, did European countries ever have such a large number of specialized names for family relationships (e.g., mother's younger brother's wife's older sister's daughter's husband?) and corresponding terms of address, and if not, why not ? I have read some Greek and Roman ancient history and have not found so many specialized names of family relationships or terms of address.
Milan said,
February 3, 2025 @ 6:12 pm
@~flow, I think it's plausible enough that such systems where widely used in a rural way of life where you lived close to most of your relations. As you are growing up/getting to know new people you would both their names, and the terms used to address them. Of course, using the terms might still be a marker of status. Generally, more powerful people have larger kinship networks. They are able to maintain these networks, and benefit from them in turn.