Arts & Culture
Kinship Terminologies and the Social Construction of Family in Comparative Perspective
Quick fact
The Hawaiian kinship system, used by a majority of the world's cultures, uses only two generational categories: one for all males of the parent's generation and one for all females. In contrast, the Sudanese (or descriptive) system uses a distinct term for each of six different kin types, creating up to nine separate categories.
Why this is interesting
If you call your father's brother 'uncle' and your mother's brother also 'uncle', you're using a system that many cultures would find surprisingly vague—or surprisingly precise. Why do these systems differ so dramatically?