Burmese kinship

The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language.^[1] In the Burmese kinship system:^[2]

Maternal and parental lineages are not distinguished, except for members of the parents' generations.
Relative age of a sibling relation is considered.
Gender of the relative is distinguished.
Generation from ego is indicated.

History

Many of the kinship terms used in Burmese today are extant or derived from Old Burmese.^[3] These include the terms used to reference siblings and in-laws.^[3]

Grades of kinship

The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:^[4]

Be (‹See Tfd›ဘဲ) - great-grandfather's great-grandfather (6 generations removed)
Bin (‹See Tfd›ဘင်) - great-grandfather's grandfather (5 generations removed)
Bi (‹See Tfd›ဘီ) - great-grandfather's father (4 generations removed)
Bay (‹See Tfd›ဘေး) - great-grandfather (3 generations removed)
Pho (‹See Tfd›ဘိုး) - grandfather (2 generations removed)
Phay (‹See Tfd›ဖေ) - father (1 generation removed)

The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego:^[4]

Tha (‹See Tfd›သား) - (1 generation removed)
Myi (‹See Tfd›မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
Myit (‹See Tfd›မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
Ti (‹See Tfd›တီ) - (4 generations removed)
Tut (‹See Tfd›တွတ်) or Hmyaw (‹See Tfd›မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
Kyut (‹See Tfd›ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
Hset (‹See Tfd›ဆက်) - (7 generations removed)

Extended family and terminology

Kinship terms differ depending on the degree of formality, courtesy or intimacy. Also, there are regional differences in the terms used.

Common suffixes

female: ‹See Tfd›မ (ma)
male: ‹See Tfd›ဖ (hpa)

Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):

eldest: ‹See Tfd›ကြီး^[5] (gyi) or ‹See Tfd›အို^[5] (oh)
second youngest: ‹See Tfd›လတ်^[5] (lat)
youngest: ‹See Tfd›လေး^[5] (lay), ‹See Tfd›ထွေး^[5] (htway), or ‹See Tfd›ငယ်^[5] (nge)

Relationships

The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:^[4]

‹See Tfd›တူအရီး (tu ayi) - relationship between uncle or aunt and nephew or niece
‹See Tfd›ခမည်းခမက် (khami khamet) - relationship between parents of a married couple
‹See Tfd›မယားညီအစ်ကို (maya nyi-ako) - relationship between the husbands of two sisters
‹See Tfd›သမီးမျောက်သား (thami myauk tha) - relationship between cousins, used in Arakanese language^[6]

Members of the nuclear family

Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Father	‹See Tfd›ဖခင် pha khin	‹See Tfd›အဖေ a phay ‹See Tfd›ဖေဖေ phay phay	Father
Mother	‹See Tfd›မိခင် mi khin	‹See Tfd›အမေ a may ‹See Tfd›မေမေ may may	Mother
Elder brother (male ego)	‹See Tfd›နောင် naung		Brother
Elder brother (female ego)	‹See Tfd›ကို ko		Brother
Younger brother (male ego)	‹See Tfd›ညီ nyi		Brother
Younger brother (female ego)	‹See Tfd›မောင် maung		Brother
Older sister	‹See Tfd›မ ma		Sister
Younger sister (male ego)	‹See Tfd›နှမ hna ma		Sister
Younger sister (female ego)	‹See Tfd›ညီမ nyi ma		Sister
Husband	‹See Tfd›လင် lin		Husband	Informal: ‹See Tfd›ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: ‹See Tfd›ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun).
Wife	‹See Tfd›မယား maya		Wife	Informal: ‹See Tfd›မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: ‹See Tfd›ဇနီး (zani).
Son	‹See Tfd›သား tha		Son
Daughter	‹See Tfd›သမီး thami		Daughter

Members of the extended family

Immediate lineage
Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Parent's father	‹See Tfd›ဖိုး pho		Grandfather
Parent's mother	‹See Tfd›ဖွား phwa		Grandmother
Father's elder brother	‹See Tfd›ဘကြီး ba gyi		Uncle
Father's younger brother	‹See Tfd›ဘလေး ba lay		Uncle	The youngest uncle may be called ‹See Tfd›ဘထွေး (ba dway).
Father's elder sister	‹See Tfd›အရီးကြီး ayi gyi		Aunt
Father's younger sister	‹See Tfd›အရီးလေး ayi lay		Aunt	The youngest aunt may be called ‹See Tfd›ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
Mother's elder brother	‹See Tfd›ဦးကြီး u gyi		Uncle	‹See Tfd›ဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete.
Mother's younger brother	‹See Tfd›ဦးလေး u lay		Uncle
Mother's elder sister	‹See Tfd›ဒေါ်ကြီး daw gyi		Aunt	Also ‹See Tfd›ကြီးတော် (kyidaw).
Mother's younger sister	‹See Tfd›ဒေါ်လေး daw lay		Aunt	The youngest aunt may be called ‹See Tfd›ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
First cousin	‹See Tfd›မောင်နှမ တဝမ်းကွဲ maung hnama ta wun gwe		First cousin	Lit. "siblings one womb removed"

Nephews and nieces
Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Sibling's son	‹See Tfd›တူ tu		Nephew
Sibling's daughter	‹See Tfd›တူမ tuma		Niece

In-laws
Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Brother's wife (female ego) Husband's sister	‹See Tfd›ယောက်မ yaungma		sister-in-law
Elder brother's wife (male ego) Wife's elder sister	‹See Tfd›မရီး mayi		sister-in-law
Younger brother's wife (male ego) Wife's younger sister	‹See Tfd›ခယ်မ khema		sister-in-law
Sister's husband Husband's younger brother Wife's brother	‹See Tfd›ယောက်ဖ yaukpha		brother-in-law
Elder sister's husband (female ego) Husband's elder brother	‹See Tfd›ခဲအို khe-oh		brother-in-law
Younger sister's husband (female ego) Husband's younger brother	‹See Tfd›မတ် mat		brother-in-law
Son's wife	‹See Tfd›ချွေးမ chwayma		daughter-in-law
Daughter's husband	‹See Tfd›သမက် thamet		son-in-law
Spouse's father	‹See Tfd›ယောက္ခထီး yaukkahti		father-in-law
Spouse's mother	‹See Tfd›ယောက္ခမ yaukkhama		mother-in-law

References

^ မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-15. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
^ Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.
^ ^a ^b Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).
^ ^a ^b ^c Sein Tu (September 1997). "Myanma Family Roles and Social Relationships". Myanmar Perspectives. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Bradley, David (1989). "Uncles and Aunts: Burmese Kinship and Gender" (PDF). South-east Asian Linguisitics: Essays in Honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson: 147–162. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2013-10-19.
^ Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 978-1-881265-47-4.

[ml-1] မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-15. Retrieved 2013-10-06.

[burling-2] Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.

[:0-3] Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).

[sein-tu-4] Sein Tu (September 1997). "Myanma Family Roles and Social Relationships". Myanmar Perspectives. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2013.

[bradley-5] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Bradley, David (1989). "Uncles and Aunts: Burmese Kinship and Gender" (PDF). South-east Asian Linguisitics: Essays in Honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson: 147–162. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2013-10-19.

[med-6] Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 978-1-881265-47-4.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]