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]

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

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

  1. Tha (သား) - (1 generation removed)
  2. Myi (မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
  3. Myit (မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
  4. Ti (တီ) - (4 generations removed)
  5. Tut (တွတ်) or Hmyaw (မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
  6. Kyut (ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
  7. Hset (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: မ (ma)
  • male: ဖ (hpa)

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

  • eldest: ကြီး[5] (gyi) or အို[5] (oh)
  • second youngest: လတ်[5] (lat)
  • youngest: လေး[5] (lay), ထွေး[5] (htway), or ငယ်[5] (nge)

Relationships

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

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

Members of the nuclear family

RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Fatherဖခင်
pha khin		အဖေ a phay
ဖေဖေ phay phay		Father
Motherမိခင်
mi khin		အမေ a may
မေမေ may may		Mother
Elder brother
(male ego)		နောင်
naung		Brother
Elder brother
(female ego)		ကို
ko		Brother
Younger brother
(male ego)		ညီ
nyi		Brother
Younger brother
(female ego)		မောင်
maung		Brother
Older sisterမ
ma		Sister
Younger sister
(male ego)		နှမ
hna ma		Sister
Younger sister
(female ego)		ညီမ
nyi ma		Sister
Husbandလင်
lin		HusbandInformal: ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun).
Wifeမယား
maya		WifeInformal: မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: ဇနီး (zani).
Sonသား
tha		Son
Daughterသမီး
thami		Daughter

Members of the extended family

Immediate lineage
RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Parent's fatherဖိုး
pho		Grandfather
Parent's motherဖွား
phwa		Grandmother
Father's elder brotherဘကြီး
ba gyi		Uncle
Father's younger brotherဘလေး
ba lay		UncleThe youngest uncle may be called ဘထွေး (ba dway).
Father's elder sisterအရီးကြီး
ayi gyi		Aunt
Father's younger sisterအရီးလေး
ayi lay		AuntThe youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
Mother's elder brotherဦးကြီး
u gyi		Uncleဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete.
Mother's younger brotherဦးလေး
u lay		Uncle
Mother's elder sisterဒေါ်ကြီး
daw gyi		AuntAlso ကြီးတော် (kyidaw).
Mother's younger sisterဒေါ်လေး
daw lay		AuntThe youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
First cousinမောင်နှမ တဝမ်းကွဲ
maung hnama ta wun gwe		First cousinLit. "siblings one womb removed"
Nephews and nieces
RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Sibling's sonတူ
tu		Nephew
Sibling's daughterတူမ
tuma		Niece
In-laws
RelationTermForm of addressEnglish equivalentNotes
Brother's wife
(female ego)
Husband's sister		ယောက်မ
yaungma		sister-in-law
Elder brother's wife
(male ego)
Wife's elder sister		မရီး
mayi		sister-in-law
Younger brother's wife
(male ego)
Wife's younger sister		ခယ်မ
khema		sister-in-law
Sister's husband
Husband's younger brother
Wife's brother		ယောက်ဖ
yaukpha		brother-in-law
Elder sister's husband
(female ego)
Husband's elder brother		ခဲအို
khe-oh		brother-in-law
Younger sister's husband
(female ego)
Husband's younger brother		မတ်
mat		brother-in-law
Son's wifeချွေးမ
chwayma		daughter-in-law
Daughter's husbandသမက်
thamet		son-in-law
Spouse's fatherယောက္ခထီး
yaukkahti		father-in-law
Spouse's motherယောက္ခမ
yaukkhama		mother-in-law

References

  1. ↑ မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်.
  2. ↑ Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. American Anthropological Association. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.
  3. 1 2 Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).
  4. 1 2 3 Sein Tu (September 1997). "Myanma Family Roles and Social Relationships". Myanmar Perspectives. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bradley, David (1989). "Uncles and Aunts: Burmese Kinship and Gender" (PDF). South-east Asian Linguisitics: Essays in Honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London: 147–162.
  6. ↑ Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 1-881265-47-1.
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