Auntie and uncle are often used beyond the family tree as respectful terms for older adults who are close to the family but not blood relatives. Listeners reported this pattern in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, India, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Japanese and Hawaiian families, and among Native American children near Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. Kingston, Jamaica, native Kareth Flash says close family friends were aunt or uncle, while less familiar adults were Mr. and Mrs., which once left her U.S.-born daughter wondering why she suddenly had so many relatives. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Nonrelative “Auntie” and “Uncle” Are Respectful, Not Unusual, in Many Cultures”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Grant, you remember that call we got from Joelle, who is part of the casting crew of The Lion King on Broadway.
Yes, yes.
Auntie.
Yes, yes.
He was asking about Auntie and Auntie because a lot of the cast and crew sit around talking about whether Auntie can be used for someone who’s not necessarily a blood relative, right?
Right.
Remember that?
And he was wondering if it was a particularly African-American usage.
And we asked people to chime in on this.
And boy, howdy, did we get a ton of emails and phone calls about this.
And we heard from people from all over the world who were talking about how, yes, indeed, the use of the term aunt or auntie or aunt or auntie is used in many cases, in many cultures, as a term of respect for an older woman who’s not necessarily the sibling of your mother or your father.
We heard from people talking about its use in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, India, the Philippines, Bangladesh.
We also asked if this were a generational thing, if maybe younger people weren’t saying this.
And we heard from Bill Robertson in Washington State who said that his in-laws are Japanese and Hawaiian, and they use that all the time.
We also heard from Barbara Gunther in Wyoming who is a teacher next to the Wind River Reservation there, and she said all of the Native American children in her classes say anti to refer to an older woman, whether they’re a biological relative or not.
And it’s, as I said, it’s a gesture of respect, and it’s not somebody who’s a stranger, but somebody who’s a close friend of the family.
And I wanted to share this email from Kareth Flash.
She writes, I’m originally from Kingston, Jamaica, and in my family it was never okay to call an adult by their first name.
Close family friends were called aunt or uncle, and other adults, not as close, were just Mr. and Mrs.
This is still true today, as the children of my close friends now in their 20s still call me aunt, and I still call my mother’s friends aunt and uncle.
And then she goes on, my daughter, who was born in the USA and lived here all her life, was at first a little confused.
When we visited Jamaica, she heard so many adults being called aunt and uncle, she didn’t understand how come she had so many relatives when she thought I had just two siblings.
That’s good. That’s awesome.
So it actually sounds like people who don’t use aunt or auntie or aunt or auntie, it sounds like we’re in the minority.
Well, maybe, yeah.
Certainly in the Anglo culture, it’s far less common to use auntie or auntie as a term of respect, right?
Yeah, for somebody who’s not related to you.
I find that fascinating.
You can see this, by the way, in the television show Hawaii Five-0, the new version.
They do actually call the older Asian relatives or older Asian friends uncle or auntie as a term of respect.
Oh, do they?
It’s funny.
Yeah.
So you can see it pop up here and there authentically in pop culture as well.
By the way, we haven’t talked at all about aunt and aunt as pronunciations.
And it turns out that aunt is common throughout most of the country.
But aunt is far more common in the Northeast.
But there are pockets here and there where aunt is, usually in the larger metropolitan areas where aunt is going to be heard.
But ant is by far and away the main pronunciation.
I changed mine, by the way.
You changed what?
I grew up as an ant-sayer, but I started saying ant when I lived in New York City for a long time.
Yeah.
Oh, no kidding.
I’m conscious of it now.
It feels a little, now I’m kind of defaulting back to ant now that I’m in California.
Is that right?
Okay, but you don’t use ant as a gesture of respect to a woman you’re not related to, right?
No, I don’t.
Yeah, I didn’t grow up that way either.
Being a white American, for the most part, that’s typical for a white American not to do that.
Right, and I’m just fascinated.
Once again, it underscores the paucity of kinship terms.
If you have more comments about auntie and auntie, by all means give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send everything an email to words@waywordradio.org.
