We All Have Kin but We Think About Them and Name Them Very Differently

The new Kinbank database lets you explore the global diversity of family and kinship terms. Compiled by an international team led by anthropologist Sam Passmore from The Australian National University, it’s providing new insights into kinship terms around the world. For example, although it’s long been assumed that most languages’ word that means “mother” starts with an M sound, such as mama or madre. But when the researchers looked at terms for parents in more than 1200 languages — most of them from New Guinea or Australia — they found that more than 40% of the parental words starting with an initial M sound referred not to the mother, but to the father. Another thing in the database: The Samoan word uso is used to refer to one’s same-gender sibling or cousin, or to someone you feel that kind of close kinship with. Uso has found its way into English-speaking areas with Samoan communities, both with that meaning and also to mean “Samoan” more generally. Sometimes it’s now rendered in English as uce. This is part of a complete episode.