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13-523: 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. As aunt/uncle and niece/nephew are separated by one generation, they are an example of

26-626: A gender-neutral alternative to terms which may be viewed as perpetuating the overgenderization of the English language; it can also be used likewise to refer to non-binary relatives. 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'). Traditionally,

39-531: A second-degree relationship . Unless related by marriage, they are 25% or more related by blood if the aunt/uncle is a full sibling of one of the parents, or 12.5% if they are a half-sibling . The word nephew is derived from the French word neveu which is derived from the Latin nepos . The term nepotism , meaning familial loyalty, is derived from this Latin term. Niece entered Middle English from

52-661: A form of endearment. 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. 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 . Lineal kinship The joint family system places no distinction between patrilineal and matrilineal relatives; instead, it focuses on differences in kinship distance (the closer

65-489: 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. 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. Among parents, some cultures have assigned equal status in their social status to daughters and nieces. This is, for instance,

78-512: Is relatively common among the world's kinship systems, at about 10% of the world's societies. It is now common in most Western societies (such as those of Europe or the Americas). In addition, it is found among a small number of food-foraging peoples such as the ǃKung tribe of Africa and the Inuit (Inuit- Yupik ) for whom it is named. The system is widely used in non-unilineal societies, where

91-564: The Old French word nece , which also derives from Latin nepotem . 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. 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. Terms such as nibling are also sometimes viewed as

104-684: The case in Indian communities in Mauritius , 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, and some Garifuna people that would transmit languages to their nieces. In some proselytizing communities the term niece was informally extended to include non-related younger female community members as

117-402: The classes bear no overall relation to genetic closeness. If a total stranger marries into the society, for example, they may be placed in the appropriate class opposite their spouse. It uses kinship terms that merge or equate genealogically distinct relatives from one another. Here, the same term is used for different kin. The Dravidian kinship-term system, discovered in 1964, is an example of

130-492: The direct line of descent). The Eskimo system is defined by its "cognatic" or "bilateral" emphasis - no distinction is made between patrilineal and matrilineal relatives. Parental siblings are distinguished only by their sex (aunt, uncle). All children of these individuals are lumped together regardless of sex (cousins). Unlike the Hawaiian system , Ego's parents are clearly distinguished from their siblings. The Eskimo system

143-639: The dominant relatives are the immediate family. In most Western societies, the nuclear family represents an independent social and economic group, which has caused the emphasis on the immediate kinship. The tendency of families in Western societies to live apart also reinforces this. The term Eskimo is considered pejorative in Canada, and has been replaced there by the term Inuit . The former remains in use in Alaska, though less so than in past decades, because

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156-427: The relative is, the more distinctions are made). The system emphasizes the nuclear family , identifying directly only the mother, father, brother, and sister. All other relatives are grouped together into categories. It uses both classificatory and descriptive terms, differentiating between gender, generation, lineal relatives (relatives in the direct line of descent), and collateral relatives (blood relatives not in

169-466: The term includes both Inuit and non-Inuit Native Alaskans . In Canada, the term Inuit kinship is therefore widely used instead of Eskimo kinship . Classificatory kinship Classificatory kinship systems, as defined by Lewis Henry Morgan , put people into society-wide kinship classes based on abstract relationship rules. These may have to do with genealogical relations locally (e.g., son to father, daughter to mother, daughter to father), but

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