Kinship Terms

Many languages encode distinctions in kinship that English collapses into a single word. “Uncle” alone hides at least four contrasts — father’s brother versus mother’s brother, and elder versus younger — that Mandarin (伯 / 叔 / 舅), Hindi (ताऊ / चाचा / मामा), and Turkish (amca / dayı) keep apart. This tool makes those distinctions computable.

How it works. The tool opens on a ready-made family tree, five generations deep, centred on you (ego). Click any relative and the panel resolves that person to a kin relation and shows the term; grow the tree by selecting a person and adding a parent, sibling, or child along the valid directions. Three interchangeable views — a pedigree chart, an indented outline, and an ancestor fan — render the same tree. Every person within the tree carries a term in the chosen language; the language picker is a neutral lookup, so any of the fifteen systems can be the main display, none privileged. Internally each person is still a path from ego upward to a common ancestor, across at most one sibling link, then back down. The path is reduced to a canonical relation — its side (paternal / maternal), cross versus parallel status (whether the linking siblings are the same sex), generation offset, cousin degree, and removal. Two genuinely computed quantities fall out of the path length: the canon-law cousin degree, and the Korean chon (촌) count, the number of parent–child links between the two people — 사촌 (4) for a first cousin, 육촌 (6) for a second.

Composed, not just looked up. For the transparent terminologies the term is generated from the resolved variables rather than stored: Sinitic cousins as a line prefix plus a sibling suffix (堂 + 哥/弟/姐/妹), Arabic cousins as ibn / bint al-ʿamm and the like, and the Korean chon word straight from the path. The rest are drawn from the comparative chart, with the structural systems (Iroquoian, Crow, Omaha, Murrinhpatha) shown as a classification — how the relation is grouped — rather than a false single-word equivalent.

Caveats are first-class. Where a term is not universal, the tool surfaces an N.B.: that Japanese 伯/叔 marks elder-versus-younger and not the side of the family; that Vietnamese bác is side-neutral for a parent’s elder sibling; that a Dravidian parallel cousin is classed with siblings while a cross cousin is a distinct, marriageable category. Romanization follows one named scheme per language, each term links out to Wiktionary, and the whole query is encoded in the page URL — so a relationship is a shareable link, a copyable code, a downloadable tree or card image, or a printable per-language reference sheet.

許多語言在親屬上所編碼的區分，英語只用一個詞便囫圇帶過。單一個 「uncle」就至少藏了四種對比——父之兄弟相對於母之兄弟，以及年長相對於 年幼——而漢語（伯／叔／舅）、印地語（ताऊ／चाचा／मामा）與土耳其語 （amca／dayı）都把它們分開。本工具讓這些區分變得可計算。

運作方式。 工具開啟時即有一棵現成的家系樹，深達五代，以 你 （ego，本位）為中心。點任一親屬，面板便把那個人歸結為一個親屬關係並 顯示稱謂；選定某人並沿有效方向新增父母、手足或子女，即可擴展此樹。三種 可互換的檢視——血統圖、縮排大綱 與 祖先扇形圖——呈現同一棵 樹。樹中每個人都帶有所選語言的稱謂；語言選擇器只是中性的查找，因此 十五種系統中任何一種都能作為主要顯示，無一受偏待。在內部，每個人仍是 一條自本位向上至共同祖先、至多跨越一條手足連結、再向下的路徑。該路徑 會被約化為一個標準關係——其 系屬（父系／母系）、交表 相對於 平表 之別（作為連結的手足是否同性）、世代 差、從表 等第，以及 隔代。 由路徑長度確實算出的有兩個量：教會法的從表等第，以及 韓式寸（촌） 數，即兩人之間親子連結的數目——一從表（first cousin）為 사촌（4）， 二從表為 육촌（6）。

是組合而成，而非只是查表。 對 透明的 稱謂系統，稱謂是由所解出的 變數產生而非儲存：漢語從表以「房系前綴 + 手足後綴」（堂 + 哥／弟／姐／ 妹）構成，阿拉伯語從表作 ibn／bint al-ʿamm 之屬，韓式寸的詞則直接由 路徑得出。其餘則取自比較表，其中結構性系統（易洛魁式、克勞式、奧馬哈 式、Murrinhpatha）以一種 分類——關係如何被歸組——呈現，而非給出 一個虛假的單詞對等。

注意事項是第一等公民。 凡稱謂並非普世通用之處，工具都會給出一則 按語：日語的 伯／叔 標記的是年長相對於年幼，而非家族的系屬；越南語的 bác 對父母之兄／姊是系屬中性的；德拉維達語系中平表與手足歸為一類， 交表則是另一個可通婚的範疇。羅馬拼音每種語言各依一套具名方案，每個 稱謂都連向 Wiktionary，而整個查詢都編碼於頁面網址中——於是一段關係便是 一條可分享的連結、一段可複製的代碼、一張可下載的家系樹或卡片圖，或一份 可列印、分語言的參考表。