From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 2701
Date: 2000-06-20
Family terms are always interesting. Mallory says PIE was an Omaha II system, whereas modern English (and most European languages) are an Eskimo system.PIE *nepot- meant nephew/grandson. I suspect a better explanation is that the word means 'male of the generation after you whose genetic makeup is one-fourth of your own'.There is also a term that shows up in Latin as avunculus which alternates between 'maternal grandfather' and 'maternal uncle'. This would mean 'male of the elder generation on the mother's side whose genetic makeup is one-fourth of your own'. But there is the rather compelling suggestion that all it means is 'paterfamilias of the mother's house'; by the time you needed a word to describe your mother's father, he was likely dead and his position taken over by your maternal uncle.As for your paternal relations, there seems to have been alternations on the pater-word. You get words like pateros in Greek (paternal uncle) or paterfamilias in Latin (head of the family).The words 'half-father' and 'half-mother' are potential in English, but never seem to have emerged. They would mean uncle/aunt, but especially to my sense of English, a paternal uncle and a maternal aunt, just like Greek materos pateros.One word we do lack -- and have lacked historically -- is a term to describe the the persons you share grandchildren with. Until this century, people really did not live long enough to where such a term would become necessary. We have to explain it as 'the parents-in-law of your child'.Mark.