Tharavad
Tharavad () is a Malayalam word for ancestral home, usually used as the common house for the joint family system practised in Kerala, India. Hermann Gundert in his Malayalam—English dictionary published in 1872, lists "tharavad" as "ancestral residence of land-owners, kings" and also as "a house, chiefly of noblemen". Contemporary usage of the word is now more generic to all social classes. The head of the family is known as the Karnavar. Inheritance is matrilineal.