So far we have been looking at genealogical relationships, defined by what anthropologists usually call kin types . Kin types are an abstraction of how people are related based on some defined criteria. Kinship terminologies are one way of reflecting indigenous opinion.
Kinship terms are the set of terms actually used by a group to name relationships.
It is possible to produce a genealogy using kinship terms alone, and some anthropologists do this. Most anthropologists collect both socially based kin types and the terms that describe the relationship relative to some ego. The main reason for this is that a term-based genealogy is fixed to a particular person, the putative ego. There is no easy way to reassign these names when ego is changed, other than simple memorisation. Thus in English Kinship Terminology the term 'uncle' can translate to kin types fb, mb, fzh and mzh.