# Burmese kinship

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Sex and Repression in Savage Society
Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship
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vte :
The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language. In the Burmese kinship system:
* Maternal and parental lineages are not distinguished, except for members of the parents' generations.
* Relative age of a sibling relation is considered.
* Gender of the relative is distinguished.
* Generation from ego is indicated.

## History

Many of the kinship terms used in Burmese today are extant or derived from Old Burmese. These include the terms used to reference siblings and in-laws.

## Grades of kinship

The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:
* Be (ဘဲ) - great-grandfather's great-grandfather (6 generations removed)
* Bin (ဘင်) - great-grandfather's grandfather (5 generations removed)
* Bi (ဘီ) - great-grandfather's father (4 generations removed)
* Bay (ဘေး) - great-grandfather (3 generations removed)
* Pho (ဘိုး) - grandfather (2 generations removed)
* Phay (ဖေ) - father (1 generation removed)
The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego:
* Tha (သား) - (1 generation removed)
* Myi (မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
* Myit (မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
* Ti (တီ) - (4 generations removed)
* Tut (တွတ်) or Hmyaw (မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
* Kyut (ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
* Hset (ဆက်) - (7 generations removed)

## Extended family and terminology

Kinship terms differ depending on the degree of formality, courtesy or intimacy. Also, there are regional differences in the terms used.

### Common suffixes

* female: မ (ma)
* male: ဖ (hpa)
Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):
* eldest: ကြီး (gyi) or အို (oh)
* second youngest: လတ် (lat)
* youngest: လေး (lay), ထွေး (htway), or ငယ် (nge)

### Relationships

The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:
* တူအရီး (tu ayi) - relationship between uncle or aunt and nephew or niece
* ခမည်းခမက် (khami khamet) - relationship between parents of a married couple
* မယားညီအစ်ကို (maya nyi-ako) - relationship between the husbands of two sisters
* သမီးမျောက်သား (thami myauk tha) - relationship between cousins, used in Arakanese language

### Members of the nuclear family

| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes |
| Father | ဖခင် pha khin | အဖေ a phay ဖေဖေ phay phay | Father | |
| Mother | မိခင် mi khin | အမေ a may မေမေ may may | Mother | |
| Elder brother (male ego) | နောင် naung | | Brother | |
| Elder brother (female ego) | ကို ko | | Brother | |
| Younger brother (male ego) | ညီ nyi | | Brother | |
| Younger brother (female ego) | မောင် maung | | Brother | |
| Older sister | မ ma | | Sister | |
| Younger sister (male ego) | နှမ hna ma | | Sister | |
| Younger sister (female ego) | ညီမ nyi ma | | Sister | |
| Husband | လင် lin | | Husband | Informal: ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun). |
| Wife | မယား maya | | Wife | Informal: မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: ဇနီး (zani). |
| Son | သား tha | | Son | |
| Daughter | သမီး thami | | Daughter | |

### Members of the extended family

Immediate lineage :
| Relation | Term | English equivalent | Notes |
| Parent's father | ဖိုး pho | Grandfather | |
| Parent's mother | ဖွား phwa | Grandmother | |
| Father's elder brother | ဘကြီး ba gyi | Uncle | |
| Father's younger brother | ဘလေး ba lay | Uncle | The youngest uncle may be called ဘထွေး (ba dway). |
| Father's elder sister | အရီးကြီး ayi gyi | Aunt | |
| Father's younger sister | အရီးလေး ayi lay | Aunt | The youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay). |
| Mother's elder brother | ဦးကြီး u gyi | Uncle | ဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete. |
| Mother's younger brother | ဦးလေး u lay | Uncle | |
| Mother's elder sister | ဒေါ်ကြီး daw gyi | Aunt | Also ကြီးတော် (kyidaw). |
| Mother's younger sister | ဒေါ်လေး daw lay | Aunt | The youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay). |
| First cousin | မောင်နှမ တဝမ်းကွဲ maung hnama ta wun gwe | First cousin | Lit. "siblings one womb removed" |
Nephews and nieces :
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes |
| Sibling's son | တူ tu | | Nephew | |
| Sibling's daughter | တူမ tuma | | Niece | |
In-laws :
| Relation | Term | English equivalent |
| Brother's wife (female ego) Husband's sister | ယောက်မ yaungma | sister-in-law |
| Elder brother's wife (male ego) Wife's elder sister | မရီး mayi | sister-in-law |
| Younger brother's wife (male ego) Wife's younger sister | ခယ်မ khema | sister-in-law |
| Sister's husband Husband's younger brother Wife's brother | ယောက်ဖ yaukpha | brother-in-law |
| Elder sister's husband (female ego) Husband's elder brother | ခဲအို khe-oh | brother-in-law |
| Younger sister's husband (female ego) Husband's younger brother | မတ် mat | brother-in-law |
| Son's wife | ချွေးမ chwayma | daughter-in-law |
| Daughter's husband | သမက် thamet | son-in-law |
| Spouse's father | ယောက္ခထီး yaukkahti | father-in-law |
| Spouse's mother | ယောက္ခမ yaukkhama | mother-in-law |