2937: Kinship Systems: Introduction

A kinship system is the collection of terms for one's familial relatives, though usually it does not consider in-laws. Lewis H. Morgan describes 6 major kinship systems, which in 1871 he named largely after New World languages (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, and Omaha), and also Sudanese. That means his native English is classified under the Eskimo-kinship system, wherein the linguistic emphasis is on the nuclear family and there are no distinctions between the patrilineal and matrilineal sides.

Some systems are even simpler, including the Hawaiian system which only distinguished gender and generation, but not the nuclear family so all siblings and cousins, as well as parents and uncles/aunts are known by the same terms respectively. 

These will be more explained in-depth in future posts, but as much as these are linguistic phenomena, they are ultimately more anthropological. Many places have seen change over time; English and Italian both use the Eskimo-kinship system, but Old English and Latin used the Sudanese-kinship system, where almost every single type of family member has its own term, but more on that in future.