Re: Kinship terminology

Adrian Morgan wrote:
> I suppose the terms just reflect our culture. The way in which we relate
> to our parent's siblings is pretty much identical to the way in which we
> relate to our parent's sibling's spouses (=spice?)
Spice, I like that.  :-)  Anyhoo, when I mentioned that to one of my
relatives (my Aunt-by-marriage [actually, all my aunts are by marriage,
neither my mother nor my father had sisters] Peggy, I think?) she said
something to the effect of "I guess it's just out of respect".  But my
point was, if it's "respect", why don't we just drop the "-in-law"
suffix?  I mean, I guess that sometimes happens, some people may call
their mother-in-law and father-in-law just "mom" and "dad", but there's
still the option of specifying that it's by marriage, there's not even
that option in uncles and aunts (and another thing - the lack of a
generic for "parent's sibling" is irritating).

But, your reason is probably true, but that doesn't make it any less
irritating.  :-)  Oh, well, there's a lot about English terms that
irritate me ... :-)

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