日本語とジェンダー【研究例会 IN ハンガリー

第14号（2014)

発表】

Kinship Terminology from a Cultural Perspective: Japanese versus? Hungarian
Judit Hidasi
This article is part of a longer study in progress on the relationship of language use and society
with regards to kinship terminology. The article first gives some frame to the study by briefly
introducing the concept of kinship, next different descent patterns in societies to be followed bycategorization patterns of kinship terminology (Morgan) in Hungarian and Japanese. It is assumed thatkin terms are valuable clues to the nature of a kinship system in a society as well as to the social statuses
and roles of kinsmen, of the roles of men and women. Changes in kinship terminology also reflect to acertain extent changes of a given society.
What is kinship?
Kinship refers to the culturally defined relationships between individuals who are commonly
thought of as having family ties. All societies use kinship as a basis for forming social groups and forclassifying people. However, there is a great amount of variability in kinship rules and patterns aroundthe world. In order to understand social interaction, attitudes, and motivations in most societies, it isessential to know how their kinship systems function.
In many societies, kinship is the most important social organizing principle alongwith gender and age. Kinship also provides a means for transmitting status and property fromgeneration to generation. It is not a mere coincidence that inheritance rights usually are based on thecloseness of kinship links. Kinship connections are based on two categories of bonds: those created bymarriage (affinal relatives: husband, wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law)
and those that result from descent (consanguinal that is ’blood’ relatives: mother, father, grandparents,children, grandchildren, uncles, aunts and cousins), which is a socially recognized link between
ancestors and descendants.
A third category of bond, referred to as fictive kinship, is used to create links to people whootherwise would not be kinsmen. Godparenthood is an example of fictive relationships in European
cultures. This kind of bondness has been particularly important for instance in Hungarian culture –where in village-communities this kind of relatedness meant a base for community cooperation,solidarity and mutual help.
People often use different kin terms when addressing someone directly in contrast to when they
are referring to them in a conversation with someone else. In Japanese culture for instance thisdistinction is clearly recognized by making a sharp difference between terms of address and terms ofreference (okaasan versus haha, or otousan versus chichi).

43

Copyright © 2014 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

日本語とジェンダー第14号（2014)

Descent patterns categorizations
Kinship is perceived in a number of different ways around the world, resulting in a variety oftypes of descent patterns and kin groups. In kinship categorizations , one individual is usually labeled
as Ego by anthropologists. This is the person to whom all kinship relationships are referred. The
unilineal descent principle traces descent only through a single line of ancestors, male orfemale. Both males and females are members of a unilineal family, but descent links are only
recognized through relatives of one gender. Hence the two basic forms of unilineal descent arereferred to as patrilineal and matrilineal.With patrilineal descent, both males and females belong totheir father's kin group but not their mother's. However, only males pass on their family identity totheir children. A woman's children are members of her husband's patrilineal line.
The form of unilineal descent that follows a female line is known as matrilineal. In this pattern,
individuals are relatives if they can trace descent through females to the same female ancestor. Whileboth male and female children are members of their mother's matrilineal descent group, only daughters
can pass on the family line to their offspring. However nowadays – due to changes in life-patterns, ineconomy and to the effect of modernization and globalization – even these societies tend to follow a
different pattern, that of cognatic descent.
Most developed societies around the world today trace descent through both the mother's andthe father's ancestors to some degree. The result is a more varied and complex family system. It occurs
in four variations: bilineal, ambilineal, parallel, and bilateral descent. Out of the four, in this paper
we briefly discuss only the ambilineal and the bilateral descent pattern, which have a direct relevanceto the discussed cultures: Japanese and Hungarian.
Ambilineal descent is a particular descent system that, in a sense, combines unilinealpatterns. Descent from either males or females is recognized, but individuals may select only one line
to trace descent. Since each generation can choose which parent to trace descent through, a family line
may be patrilineal in one generation and matrilineal in the next. The reason for choosing one side over
the other often has to do with the relative importance of each family. In other words, ambilineal descentis flexible in that it allows people to adjust to changing family situations. For instance, when a man
marries a woman from a politically or economically more important family, he may agree to let hischildren identify with their mother's family line to enhance their prospects and standing within thesociety.
By far the most common pattern is bilateral descent, which is commonly used in European
cultures. This cognatic system traces descent from all biological ancestors regardless of their genderand side of the family. In addition, all male and female children are members of both their father's andmother's families.
However, particular families may disregard the descent pattern dominant in their culture andtreat it as a matter of individual choice – legal regulations permitting.
While there is no inherent gender bias in the bilateral descent principle, there often is a slightmale bias in marriage practices and in the creation of families. This can be seen in many socities today
when a man's family name is used by his wife and children. With this exception, however, there usuallyis no other similarity with patrilineal descent.

44Copyright © 2014 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

日本語とジェンダー第14号（2014)

Kinship terms and kinship terminology
Kinship terminology refers to the various systems used in languages to refer to the persons to whom
an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and thereforeuse different systems of kinship. (Lévi-Strauss 1949)

Kinship terminologies include the terms of addressused in different languages or communities for different relatives and the terms of reference used to identify
the relationship of these relatives to Ego or to each other.
Kin terms are valuable clues to the nature of a kinship system in a society as well as to the social
statuses and roles of kinsmen. Based on

the typology of six basic patterns of classification elaborated by

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human
Family there are six distinct kin naming systems used around the world. They are referred to as
the Eskimo, Hawaiian, Sudanese, Omaha, Crow, and Iroquois systems. They are nevertheless not limited tothe cultures for which they were named. These systems are seldom followed exactly – they usually haveunique cultural variations. The Eskimo system is one of the simplest, despite the fact that it is found in themajority of the most technologically complex societies. The common denominator for the Eskimo kin
naming system is an economy that forces the nuclear family to be mostly independent.

The Eskimo kinnaming system is found mainly in societies that use the bilateral principle of descent and that strongly
emphasize the nuclear family over more distant kinsmen. Both Ego’s mother’s and father’s collateralrelatives are considered equally important. That is to say, no distinction is made between relatives on themother’s and father’s side of the family. This is reflected in the kin names. Despite the fact that somerelatives are lumped together with the same linguistic terms in the Eskimo and other kin naming systems,
people do make distinctions between them as unique individuals.
The Eskimo-type kinship terminology system

We assume that both Japanese and Hungarian are typologically nearest to the ”eskimo kinship”
system, which has both classificatory and descriptive terms; in addition to sex and generation, it also
distinguishes between lineal relatives (those related directly by a line of descent) and collateral relatives(those related by blood, but not directly in the line of descent). Lineal relatives have highly descriptiveterms; collateral relatives have highly classificatory terms. Another dimension added to kinshiprelations is relative age. Rather than one term for "brother", there exist, for example, different words
for "older brother" and "younger brother". (Haga 1998)

45

Copyright © 2014 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

日本語とジェンダー第14号（2014)

In traditional Hungarian society an individual was identified principally by his or her place ina kinship organization. Traditionally, more emphasis was placed on the paternal kin than on the maternalbecause of the "male-centric" worldview in Hungarian rural society and the economically more
beneficial inheritance system to males along the patriline. An urban and a rural system coexist inHungary. The urban system reflects nuclear family organization, and the rural system and its many
regional variants depict the traditional extended family organization. Generally, Hungarian kinshipterminology is descriptive and sharply distinguishes between affinal kin, consanguineous kin, andfictive kin. The fictive kinship of godparenthood ( keresztkomaság ) is a highly significant, lifelong
alliance.
Bilateral kinship-terms Hungarian – English – Japanese+5

HUN szépapa

HUN szépanyaENG
great-great-grandfather

ENGgreat-great grandmotherJAP 高祖父 kousofu

JAP+4

HUN ükapa

高祖母 kousobo

HUN ükanya

ENG great-grandfather

ENG great-grandmotherJAP 曽祖父 sousofu

JAP 曾祖母+3

HUN nagyapa

HUN nagyanya

ENG grandfather

ENG

JAP 祖父JAPsofu+2

HUN apasousobo

grandmother祖母soba

HUN anya

ENG father

ENG motherJAP
お 父 さ んotousan/chichi

JAP
お母さん /母okaasan/haha/

父EGO
-1

HUN (a) fia
ENG

magyar (a) lányason

angol daughter

JAP 息子 musuko

japán 娘 musume

長子 choushi
長男 chounan
次男 jinan

長女 choujo
次女 jijoHUN-2

fiú unoka

HUN lány unoka

ENG grand-son

ENG grand-daughter

JAP 孫 mago
孫息子 magomusuko

JAP
孫娘 magomusume-3

HUN dédunoka (fiú)

HUN dédunoka (lány)

46

Copyright © 2014 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.

日本語とジェンダー第14号（2014)

ENG
great-grandson

ENG
great-granddaughter

JAPJAP

曾孫 himago

曾孫 himago-4

HUN ükunoka (fiú)

HUN ükunoka (lány)

ENG
great-great-grandson

ENG
great-great-granddaughter

JAPJAP

玄孫

玄孫

yashago/genson

yashago/genson

Kinship systems are changing rapidly today as societies are increasingly exposed to other cultures
around the world and new sytems of economies, not speaking about societal changes (Lévi-Strauss 1949).
Japanese kinship terms have two categories: reference terms and address terms. (Suzuki 1978) The latter isused to call your family without using their name. Kinship reference terms are never used to call them directly.
In this respect it is interesting to witness in modern Japanese language use the process of substituting
Japanese terms by borrowed English words, and also the „perspective shift” in address terms which can bedetected in the way family members called each other in the remote past, in the near past and call each otherin present times.

It is namely significant to note that the traditional terms of address for family members(otousan, okaasan, oneesan) are increasinly being substituted by borrowed English terms (papa, mama,shisutaa) on the one hand, and on the other addressing in the nuclear family has also undergone great changes.
In modern Japanese language use in-family addressing is recently formulated from the perspective of thechild – he/she who is in the focus of the family. This is different from the traditional

perspective. Theseaspects – among others – are the ones that require further research.
Research will be expanded to aspects of change in Hungarian society and changes in language use.
Finally the collected data with respect to the two cultures and languages could be compared for furtherconclusions.

References
Haga Yasushi: 1998 Nihongo no shakai shinri.Tokyo: Ningen no Kagakusha.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude: 1949 The Elementary Structures of Kinship. New York: Beacon Press.
Morgan, Lewis Henry: 1871 Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family.
Smithsonian.
Nakane Chie: 1967 Tateshakai no ningenkankei.Tokyo: Kodansha.
Suzuki Takao: 1978 Kotoba to bunka (Translated as Words in context by Akira Miura), Tokyo:
Kodansha International.
（ユディット ヒダシ・ブダぺスト商科大学教授）

目次に戻る
47

Copyright © 2014 The Society for Gender Studies in Japanese All Rights Reserved.