Re: kinship words

From: Paul J Kriha (paul.nospam.kriha_at_paradise.net.nz)
Date: 08/02/04 

Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 16:33:58 +1200

Joseph W. Murphy <jwmurphy700@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:410d2d74.1792988@news.east.earthlink.net...
> hrichler@sympatico.ca (howard richler) wrote:
>
> >In reading a book about native American languages, I came across two
> >lovely kinship words. The first, from Apache, is "sitike" which refers
> >to a non-related group (usually inlaws) that come to the aid of a
> >person in crisis, the second from Sioux is "wistelkiya" which refers
> >to sexual bashfulness between female and male relatives. I was
> >wondering if anybody knows some interestiong kinship words in various
> >languages that do not exist in English.
> >
> >Thanks

[...]

> Also, I know you asked to exclude English from the discussion, but I
> thought some of our kinship terms and quasi-terms were interesting and
> might be fun to throw into the mix.
>
> Here are a few I thought of:
>
> "kissing cousin"
> "rich uncle"
> "Dutch uncle"
> "sugar daddy"
> "godmother"
> "godparents"
> "godfather"
> "fosterparent"
> "fairy godmother"
> "putative father"
> "adoptive parent"
> "foundling"
> "maiden aunt"
>
> I'm sure there are equivalents for some of these in other languages.
> Others I not so sure about. Any thoughts?
>
> Joe Murphy
> Boy Linguist

Recently I saw a Czech film "Z^elary". The story was situated in the
Moravian countryside near Polish border. In it a country woman
described a boy as "mle'c^ny' bratr" of her son. The boy's natural
mother lost milk when he was a baby and this woman nursed him
for a while.

In the subtitles it was translated as "milk brother".
So, milk brother, milk son, milk mother, etc. for your collection.
Third generation twice removed milk niece :-)

Are such names for that kind of relationship actually used in any
of the English speaking societies?

Paul JK

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