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Guildworld Kinship Terminology

Phietadix

Auror
So I've gone ahead and given the world with my Guild Based Family Structure the working title "Guildworld". One thing I was trying to work out back in 2019 when I came up with the Idea, was what sort of Kinship Terminology would this type of society use?.

Edit: I use Guild and Household fairly interchangeably throughout this thread, but they're also pretty interchangeable in this world in general

From what I can remember from Anthropology, typically kinship terms are typically based on the actual role a family member has in child rearing and family dynamics.

For this world, a child under 13 would for example maybe have 5 different kinship terms in descending order of importance. Biological mother, household adults, other household children, biological father (if not in the same guild), non-guild friends, and strangers.

Wherass a adult between 13 and the age of consent (let's go with 16) could have a term for Childhood Household adults (including their mother), Ward Household adults (including bio-father if included), Childhood Household Children, Ward Household Children, friends, and strangers.

An adult over the age of 16 would have the same, but would then be adding terms for lovers to the mix. Things like Metamors and in vs out of Guild relationships becoming relevant.

How this is affected by switching guilds beyond just the 2 is something that is being considered, but is going to be slightly more complicated

Any other thoughts or suggestions for kinship terminology for this type of society (most of the relevant information being in the other thread, granted)? Does what I put down here seem to make sense, or is it too far from the real world equivalents to function coherently? Any suggestions on alerations or even specific words to use?
 
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SundryHen

Scribe
This is quite detailed. It does make sense to me, reading just this and having not seen the other thread.

What I found a bit confusing was the overuse of 'guild' and 'household', especially interchangeably. If you're really keen on that, that's fine, but my hot take is to pick one and stick to it, might be easier for you as well. Also, have you considered drawing a map of this? Sort of a structural diagram of sorts? Could help too. And finally, could all of these have totally different but somewhat connected names? In my culture, let's take females for an example, the hierarchy from youngest to oldest in a household would go as follows: ćerka, majka, baka, prabaka, čukunbaka (if alive). So there is certain connectivity in those last syllables of 'ka'.

What I love about your kinships is how they hint at a larger world, I'm really curious to know more just from reading the ideas.
 

Phietadix

Auror
This is quite detailed. It does make sense to me, reading just this and having not seen the other thread.

What I found a bit confusing was the overuse of 'guild' and 'household', especially interchangeably. If you're really keen on that, that's fine, but my hot take is to pick one and stick to it, might be easier for you as well. Also, have you considered drawing a map of this? Sort of a structural diagram of sorts? Could help too. And finally, could all of these have totally different but somewhat connected names? In my culture, let's take females for an example, the hierarchy from youngest to oldest in a household would go as follows: ćerka, majka, baka, prabaka, čukunbaka (if alive). So there is certain connectivity in those last syllables of 'ka'.

What I love about your kinships is how they hint at a larger world, I'm really curious to know more just from reading the ideas.
Most of your confusion was from stuff that was in my other thread. I can try to summarize it here when I have more time, but I would look there first if you're curious

Edit: On the 'pick 1' it would be guild, but I slipped into household for this thread a lot, because it's a word that is actually a thing in real world kinship, wherass trade guilds never worked like this to my knowledge
 
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In many cultures, children address adults who are close to them but not their parents as "auntie" or "uncle." In some cultures, that term of address is used for everyone who belongs to your parents' generation but is not your parent. People two generations older than you would be addressed as grandmother or grandfather, whether or not they're your actual grandparents.

For biological mother, why not just mother? Do children in this society have multiple mothers (similar to, say, lesbian couples who are both moms to their kids, even if only one of them is the biological mom)? If having more than one mom is common in this culture, the moms could be addressed as Mom Their Name: Mom Jane, Mom Anne, etc.

For biological father, again, why not just father? Are there typically other fathers in the child's life? Why is there a need to specify?
 

Queshire

Auror
I feel like simplicity is your friend here. Auntie, uncle, gramps, granny, etc help the reader roughly understand what their relationship is at a glance.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
What happens here in Sweden with younger children is that they address adults who are not their parents as "friend's parent", that is, they say things like "Kajsa's mamma, can you help me with.." or Ville's pappa, where is...". Their own parents are almost always addressed as "mamma" and "pappa". Adults whom they don't know as parents of friends are usually addressed as "farbror" (uncle) or "moster" (auntie). There was a trend in the late 1960s and early 1970s to teach children to use first names even for their parents, but that seems to have died out again.
 
To continue to simplify, what's wrong with calling other children from the same household brothers and sisters? Those terms are often used to signify an emotional relationship as much as a biological one. If you were raised together, you're siblings, regardless of blood. Friends from outside the household would be friends, and strangers would be strangers. That's all there is to it.

Ward household children could also be called brothers and sisters. Maybe ward brother or ward sister when there's a need to get specific. It would be like close foster siblings or step siblings: often they refer to each other as simply their brother or their sister. If there's any need to clarify, that's when they specify foster or step.
 
There was a trend in the late 1960s and early 1970s to teach children to use first names even for their parents, but that seems to have died out again.
That trend also happened in some of the more liberal leaning parts of the U.S. at that time. It never became very common for parents, but it's now very common in all but the most conservative regions (i.e. the South) for children to use first names with friends' parents, parents' friends, and neighbors. Children with stepparents call their stepparents by their first names; that's usual throughout the country.

When I was little (born in the mid 1970s) my friends' parents went by their first names, and so did all of my preschool teachers. But when I started elementary school, it was still the norm there to address the teachers as Mr. or Mrs. Last Name (Ms. for unmarried female teachers). That's still the case in nearly all schools, except that now female teachers much more often go by Ms. regardless of their marital status. Even in preschools, teachers are usually addressed as Ms. or Mr. First Name. Mine was an anomaly, and still is (a friend has a child there now, and I know from him that the teachers still go by just their first names).
 
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Phietadix

Auror
Honestly, I think using the English terms would be more confusing to the reader than clarifing, because they would bring in the baggage that comes with it to the table. Water is thicker than blood in this world, to reverse the old idiom.

Honestly the Hawaiian kinship system is closer than the English one to being relevant but it has some different issues for this culture.

I don't think there is an equivalent word for grandparent for instance in this culture. Genealogy would be traced by Guild membership rather than through ancestry. Children in your ward guild would never be brothers and sisters, but calling them neices and nephews doesn't really carry the right sentiment I don't think; plus it doesn't distinguish them from the children you did grow up with. Similarly, father is too familiar a term for the unimportant role the biological father plays in this system. Half the reason to know who he even is would probably just be to avoid incest, (other half could be those sentimental reasons, or what have you)
 
Plenty of children these days have little or no contact with their biological fathers. Sometimes the father role is filled by a stepfather instead, if it's filled by anyone.

A friend who had a child in that situation drew the distinction with her child by referring to her daughter's absent biological father as "your father" and to daughter's stepfather, who was the active father in her life, as "your dad." Dad is a personal relationship. Father is sometimes just genetic.

As for the "water is thicker than blood" philosophy, that's actually a very longstanding cultural precept in many parts of the world. Kin, in the truest sense of the word, means people you have an affinity with, but not necessarily a blood relationship. And people pretty universally have used those familial terms, like brother and sister, auntie and uncle, to describe their affinity kin without an expectation that the word automatically meant a blood relationship. They could clarify by saying, "brother from the same mother" or "sister from my lodge" or something like that, but the word alone just describes the quality of the relationship.
 

Phietadix

Auror
Summary of general family structure
First, here is a quick summary of the relevant information from the other thread. In this fantasy culture, rather than people living together in groups and lineages based around blood ties and marriages, people instead group together in groups based around trades and skills. These groups will have the name “Guilds”, but I’m not intending to fully base how they work on how trade guilds worked historically. A child will typically live in the same guild as their mother until they are 13. Once they are 13, they are considered an adult and are expected to ward at a guild away from the people they grew up with for at least one year, as a coming of age tradition
The building blocks of the terms
I've also finally bit the bullet and finally just started putting some sounds together. I liked the idea of using prefixes and suffixes to make the words all stay similar. So I started to build some words with that in mind.

A should be consistently read as an "ah" sound
I should be consistently read as a "ee" sound,
O should be consistently read as an "o" sound

Sam as the base for the mother
Tamla as the base for adults
Na as the base for children

chi, as a suffix for people you are actively living with in childhood
ro, as a suffix for people you are lived with first as an adult
chiro, for people you lived with in childhood, but to whom you are now an adult

Ba as the prefix for those who you still consider family, but are not actively living with.
Pa as the prefix for the you never actually lived with, but still consider family. Commonly given to very close friends
Wa, for your biological father and any of his biological children. But only those who you never lived with as a child

Examples of some full words
Here are some of the most important combinations, and what I would consider their closet counterpart in the American English version of Kinship terms. For anyone curious, the official term for the kinship term structure used in English is the "Eskimo System".

  • Samchi, for your mother while you are a child. This one in particular would probably have a fair amount of linguistic drift, with younger children often changing this to sammy, sam, sa sa, or even just sa.
The official kinship term for you mother as an adult would be Tamlachiro, or Batamlachiro. But I imagine that Samchi, Samchiro, or Basamchiro would see also plenty of use realistically

  • Nachi or na, for children you are growing up with. The closest English equivalents would be brother, sister, and cousin
  • Nachiro for those same children, if you move back to the guild as an adult. They were brothers and sisters once, but you're a grown up now, and so your relationship is no longer the same
  • Naro for children to whom you were always an adult. The closest English equivalents would be niece, nephew, son, and daughter

  • Tamlachi, for adults you’re growing up with as an adult. Basically your aunts and uncles
  • Tamlaro for adults you are first lived with as a adult. I guess just roommate, found family, or queer platonic partner, would be the best English equivalents

  • Watamla, for your biological father but only if you did not grow up with him, otherwise he's still just Tamlachi or Tamlachiro
  • Wanaro, for your father's children, but only if you did not grow up with them. The English equivalent would be half-sibling



Incest
While one of the reasons for the different types of kinship structures is communicating family roles and dynamics, another major reason is communicating what is considered incest. For this system, having a sexual relationship with anyone with the suffixes "Chi" or "Chiro" or the prefix "Wa" is considered to be incest.

Edit: Fixing some grammatical errors
 
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