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BTW Adpihi's kinship system is more Iroquois than Sudanese. I'll edit the post where I made the mistake.

This is the kinterm of "Flokrati":
family = ela
parent = vevinö
parents = vevinöre
grandparent = stivevinö
grandparents = stivevinöre
spouse = coja
sibling = cagabiö
child = cjonga
father = babö
mother = ina
uncle = jingö
aunt = jinga
brother = gabiö
sister = gabia
grandfather = stibabö
grandmother = stina
male cousin = sjosenö
female cousin = sjosena
son = ügolü
daughter = ügola
nephew, niece = gabonga
man = neikö
woman = janima

el flokratisson wrote:

This is the kinterm of "Flokrati":
family = ela
....
woman = janima

Thanks, el flokratisson.

So if el flokratisson has 0 posts, does that mean that posts in this forum don't count towards your total?

(I'm just going to test it now - if this is true, i'll still have 13554 at the present moment – edit: this is true.)

Lakota!

I got very messed up trying to sort out the colours, so I can't really remember if they mean anything very much... They make it look pretty though.

Is there any way to draw a family tree or kinship diagram in three dimensions to show polyamorous unions? That would make it easier for me to see any gaps in my conlang's kinship system.

Just put extra = signs around the person? I did that in the female Ego in the first picture.

That works great if nobody has more than two spice.
But you need something more flexible for people with three or four or more marital partners.
(As long as you stick to the convention of having people in one generation all on the same horizontal level, with people of an earlier generation in levels above and those of later generations in levels below, it's going to be difficult to draw all the marriages of a person with more than two marriages.)

If there are five people each of whom is related to each of the other four, you can't draw that without having lines cross.

If there are two sets of three people, with each person in each set being related to each person in the other set, again you can't draw that without having lines cross.

The problem comes in that the wives are sisters and the husbands are brothers, and that the husbands are the women's paternal second cousins- the women's fathers are the maternal cross cousins of the men's mothers.

x= male
o= female

x-o
| |
o-x

o-x-o

x-o-x

x-o-x
| | |
o-x-o
^^^
The above are the most common marriage arrangements in my conculture.

You only need to show the most immediate relationships, those that you're already showing; namely, who is whose parent, who is whose child, and who is whose spouse.

There's an indirect way also to show who is who's sibling, that you're already using. From the double horiziontal line representing a marriage, you draw a single vertical line to a (possibly long) single horizontal line representing the siblinghood of all that couple's children; then append each such child from that single horizontal line by another, shorter, single vertical line.

If every person in the marriage is regarded as married to every other person in the marriage, and every child of the marriage is regarded as the child of every person in the marriage, one way (don't know how easy it would be) to work things would be to draw a (possibly long) horizontal double line to represent the marriage, and adjoin the spouses from above to the marriage by a short vertical (possibly double) line.

Here's an example:


Each of the five children (three sons, Dan, Fred, and Henry, and two daughters, Ellen and Gladys), has two fathers -- Bob and Ted -- and two mothers -- Carol and Alice. The diagram doesn't bother to tell whether a given child was biologically begotten by Bob or by Ted, nor whether a given child was borne by Carol or by Alice.

Bob is married to Carol and to Ted and to Alice; Carol is married to Bob and to Ted and to Alice; Ted is married to Bob and to Carol and to Alice; and Alice is married to Bob and to Carol and to Ted.
Bob is Ted's brother and Ted is Bob's brother; Carol is Alice's sister and Alice is Carol's sister.





I have a confusion.
In your last diagram, suppose I give the particpants names;

I understand Abe, Chuck and Eddy are each others' brothers, and Babs, Dee, and Fanny are each others' sisters.
I understand Abe is married both to Babs and to Dee; Chuck is married both to Babs and to Fanny; Dee is married both to Abe and to Eddy; and Fanny is married both to Chuck and to Eddy.
But, is Abe married to Fanny? And, is Chuck married to Dee?

Your "one wife two husbands" and "one husband two wives" examples wouldn't be any problem to handle as Astraios suggested, IMO, unless you insist on explicitly showing that a wife's cohusbands are each the other's brother and/or that a husband's cowives are each the other's sister.

If you just assume, and let your diagram-reader assume, that two people with the same spouse must be one another's sibling, I don't see why the "two husbands two wives" example should be a problem either.



What about;

• one husband, three wives
• one wife, three husbands
• two husbands, three wives
• two wives, three husbands

?

And BTW: Is the following true?

Depending upon the arrangement, Abe might not necessarily be considered married to Fanny, nor Chuck to Dee. As far as the other arrangements are concerned it could, theoretically anyway, be:
one husband, one wife
one husband, two wives
one husband, three wives
one husband, four wives

two husbands, one wife
two husbands, two wives
two husbands, three wives
two husbands, four wives

three husbands, one wife
three husbands, two wives
three husbands, three wives
three husbands, four wives

four husbands, one wife
four husbands, two wives
four husbands, three wives
four husbands, four wives

The combinations of trios, quartets, and sestets are among the more common arrangements, with the bolded being most common

As far as family dynamics are concerned, the division of labor and power is not so much men vs women, as it is head spouses (or alpha-male and alpha-female) vs younger spouses. However, strangely enough, property is passed down to the youngest sibling. It is figured that while the older spouses know best how to run a household, they also have had more time to establish themselves and the youngest children are rewarded for caring for their elderly parents in their youth.

From my notes:
Property is passed on Mother to daughter & Father to son. Sons generally cannot inherit their mother's property (unless there are extenuating circumstances) and daughters may not inherit their father's (again, unless there are extenuating circumstances). In the case of multiple sons and daughters, property is passed on the basis of ultimogeniture where the youngest child or subset of children (in the case of multiple births) of size m in a set of n children inherits m/(n-1) fraction of the property to be passed on.

I realize that I might need to revise things for my later concultures, as the Xorfavoi might be a little unrealistic compared to most human cultures, but a lot of the decisions I made seemed like good ideas at the time, until I realized that the dynamics could go horribly wrong and such a culture might prove to be unstable.

well, when I was taking Anthropology classes, one thing I learned was that, in India, there is at least one group where it's the youngest (sometimes the youngest daughter) who inherits the home and property.

_________________
MadBrain is a genius.

The answer to that would depend on the particular culture – even within Latinist's own system his answer is "depends on the arrangement", after all. You would get some cultures with multiple marriage where it is obligatory for everyone in an arrangement to be married to everyone else, and some cultures where it's not. IRL, Western polyamory circles, while not legally recognised, tend to follow the more flexible rule that anyone can be in a relationship with anyone else, and as many as they like, hence A=B=C doesn't mean that A and C are also in a relationship, but could. Then theoretically there's probably a difference between [ABC] (using ad hoc notation) all in one relationship as a triad, and A=B=C=A where there are three individual relationships; A and B are together and C forms a relationship with both of them separately, and there isn't a single relationship uniting them. However, at this point it's pointless nitpicking, to be honest.

I do realise i'm using a more simplistic example here where everyone's either the same sex or bi, and it's slightly more complicated when you have two groups of 3 members for whom it's taboo to be married to each other – in this case, you've got two groups of three siblings, and you might also have the constraint that each marriage must be between opposite-sexes, and it's not entirely clear what A and F's relationship might be.

Thanks for the answers!




I don't think it's so strange.

I never heard of a RealLife culture in which the youngest child, regardless of sex, inherited something from both parents. But "youngest daughter inherits" and "youngest son inherits" are both existing systems in real life.

There's a reason you didn't have to coin the term "ultimogeniture".

In the modern United States of America the most common pattern is, and for some time has been, that the youngest daughter stays at home and unmarried while the parents live, and takes care of the aging parents. As compensation for this she inherits the home when her parents die (also, then she can marry).

(Of course, the U.S.A. is so diverse that "the most common pattern" isn't very common.)

In Martin Luther's time German farmers practiced ultimogeniture; the youngest son inherited the farm.

Also: there are plenty of natcultures in which there is bilateral inheritance; some things are passed mother-to-daughter (especially including things thought to be "women's things", useful and/or valuable to women but not to men), and some things are passed down father-to-son (especially including things thought to be "men's things", useful and/or valuable to men but not to women).

There's some island culture in the Mediterranean, near Greece I think, in which all the men earn their livings on boats, and in consequence spend the daylight hours on the sea most days. Among them, houses are passed from mother to daughter, but boats are passed father to son.

I think in our own culture wedding dresses and wedding rings are passed down mother-to-daughter, at least in certain families; they may go mother-in-law to daughter-in-law if the mother-in-law has no daughters and the bride's own mother has already bequeathed hers. My father's mother gave her wedding ring to my mother; she had two sons and no daughters, so she gave it to the younger of her two daughters-in-law.

If the Mapudungu Mundugumor really have a set of unilineal descent groups they call "the ropes", in which membership is passed father-to-daughter and mother-to-son, then, names and kingroup-memberships, at least, can be systematically passed to opposite-sex children.

In my own conculture, portable goods are passed father-to-son; nonportable concrete goods are passed mother-to-daughter; and intangibles such as offices are passed along the "rope".



Thanks!
Can you tell us more?
Do you have a reference?
Can you give us a link?

I guess the reason I thought it was unrealistic is that I was trapped in Western societal schemas, so I had trouble imagining such a society. The leadership of the clans (the sovereign units of society) is passed along through agnatic seniority (the chieftain's brother inherits the position) in the patriclans, and uterine seniority (the chieftainess' sister inherits the position) in the matriclans, inheritance is based upon ultimogeniture, lineage, thus citizenship, is traced through dual descent, polygynandry is practiced by the culture. The only instances when a child would inherit property from the opposite sex parent would be in the event that they are the last surviving member of their lineage due to disease or genocide or those who would be allowed to inherit decline their birthright. The idea about houses and boats sounds like a good one that would be oddly appropriate to my conculture as they are sea faring complex gatherers and garden agriculturalists. Would it be appropriate for an Iroquois kinship system to be used by such a culture?

I don't really know enough to say, but, I don't see why not. I'd think they'd be a natural fit for each other, and either of them would be a natural fit for dual descent.

Part of the reason to conculture is to conduct "thought experiments" to see what could work together. I'll bet there's a "natculture" like what you've described in your last post; but even if there isn't, if you can make it work in your conculture, why not do so?

I guess you have a point. I've tried to find information on how cultures incorporating various features work, but it can get difficult. I created the Xorfavoi with the idea that there would be a degree of gender equality. Now, from what I read in the PCK, the degree of patriarchy or matriarchy depends upon what elements you include. Thus, if you have a patrilineal naming system, the father giving a dowry to the groom's family, property and titles are passed patrilineally or through agnatic seniority, you have the makings of a patriarchal culture. So, I can see the marriage rituals would include exchange of gifts by both sides- the groom(s) pays a brideprice to the family/families of the wife/wives, and the family of the wife/wives gives a dowry to the groom. This would reinforce the economic order, which is primarily a gift economy, but also resembles a barter system in the larger cities. I can only imagine how the Europeans would react to my conpeople, who I have located in the mid Atlantic. I actually would find it interesting to write a few stories that describe the encounters that Muslim and Christian explorers, merchants, and conquerors had with the Xorfic people.

sadly no - it was 10 years ago, and my notes are in storage.

_________________
MadBrain is a genius.

I'm not Rodlox, and don't know about that example from India, but:

Inheritance by the youngest son has been customary in some parts of Germany, including the place I grew up. In some places, it is still like that.

_________________
...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

Hellesan

Generic
m bruc –s "clan", a group of families that descend from a common ancestor and constitute a social unity with rights and duties.
f festarie –s "family", in a restrictive sense it means a person with his parents and brothers/sisters; in a wider sense it also includes cousins, uncles, aunts and granpas/grandmas.
adj and n festariarn –s "family (subs)", "familiar"; "(a) relative".

The family
n tarol –e –s –es "member of the same clan or family", generic for "parent" (in a wide sense).
n domarn –e –s –es, a) The whole formed by one's father, mother, uncles, aunts, granfathers and grandmothers; b) Legal guardian/tutor.

f amel –s "mum", affective.
f ama –es "mum", babytalk.
f maide –s / maie –s / madhe –s "mother".
f camaide –s "wet nurse", alternative/temporary mother, the woman being from the same family (in a wide sense, usually is a mother's sister or firstcousin).
f mairole –s, a) Stepmother from the same clan as her stepsons/stepdaughters; b) Adoptive mother; c) female sponsor, female patron.
f maitesarne –s "stepmother", foreign to the clan.

m ata –s / atar –s "dad", affective, babytalk.
m arte –s "father".
m ardol –s, a) stepfather from the same clan as his stepsons/stepdaughters; b) Adoptive father; c) male sponsor, male patron.
m artesarn –s "stepfather", foreign to the clan.

m avet –s "uncle", generic.
m maçanodre –s "maternal uncle", the brother of my mother.
m adranodre –s "paternal uncle", the brother of my father.

f aice –s "aunt", generic. Aite is a common variant.
f mairamadhe –s "maternal aunt", the sister of my mother.
f adramadhe –s "paternal aunt", the sister of my father.

n ausi ause –s –s / ausi euse –s –s "grandfather, grandmother".
n noseu noseie –s –s "great-grandfather, great-grandmother".
m noseu noscar "great-great-grandfather", literally "second great-grandfather".
f noseie noscare "great-great-grandmother", literally "second great-grandmother".

n deu deure –s –s "son, daughter".
n dornol –e –s –es, a) "stepson, stepdaughter (from the same clan as his/her brothers/sisters)"; b) A person considered in relation to his/her godparents; c) Adopted son/daughter.
n anyor –e –s –es "nephew, niece", my brother's/sister's sons/daughters.
n tardor –e –s –es "grandson, granddaughter".
m deuresarn –e –s –es "stepson, stepdaughter", foreign to the clan.

n orne –esse –s –esses "brother, sister".
n gernès –esse –eus –esses "(first) cousin", a generic term.
m pl / f pl gers "one's brothers/sisters and first cousins (he/she included)".
n dórne –esse –s –esses, it has two meanings: a) A generic term to group one's brothers/sisters and first cousins; b) A person that is member of the same clan as his/her halfbrothers/halfsisters.
m ornesarn –e –s –es "stepbrother, stepsister", foreign to the clan.

n astró –one –ons –ones "brother-in-law, sister-in-law", generic for a) my brother's/sister's partner; b) my partner's brothers/sisters.
n astrorne –esse –s –esses "brother-in-law, sister-in-law", my brother's/sister's partner.
n astró perís –ius "brother-in-law", my partner's brother.
f astrone perise –s "sister-in-law", my partner's sister.

m neu –s "son-in-law", my son's/daughter's husband.
f noce –s "daughter-in-law", my son's/daughter's wife.

n sandro –s sandre –s "father-in-law, mother-in-law", my partner's parents; generic term.
f damaire –s "mother-in-law", my wife's mother.
m damart –s "father-in-law", my wife's father.
f brungaire –s "mother-in-law", my husband's mother.
m brugard –s "father-in-law", my husband's father.
n cassandro –s cassandre –s "father-in-law, mother-in-law", my son's/daughter's parents-in-law.

n hernès –esse –eus –esses "heir, heiress", "inheritor", generic term.
m broceu –s "first-born", older son in a house, oldest of brothers/sisters.
f breceue –s "first-born", older daughter in a house, oldest of brothers/sisters.

m dombre –s "husband".
m tusdombre –s "ex-husband".
f deune –s "wife".
f tusdeune –s "ex-wife".

_________________
Un llapis mai dibuixa sense una mà.

Thanks, Izambri and WeepingElf.

@Izambri, that looks cool.

(You might want to spell-check it. "Apternal" looks like a typo for "paternal". Is it?)



So, your parent-in-law is almost a Cassandra?
(The Cassandra in Homer's Iliad didn't have children AFAIK; did she even have a husband?)



Interesting that these terms are already built-in to the language. What cultural feature does that reflect?


Sons can have husbands? Daughters can have wives? Interesting.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Impressively complete, and impressively detailed.

Thanks, TomH! I spent the whole night working on it.

OK, so I've corrected some typos and errors. Now the list is correct.


Yep, it was funny to find that cassandre [kə'sandɾə]. It's from cam– "together" + sandro, sandre "father-in-law, mother-in-law".

I'm not sure the translation for cassandro, cassandre is correct, since "father-in-law, mother-in-law" is sandro, sandre. The specific meaning for cassandro, cassandre is "my son's/daughter's parents-in-law".


Well, the etymology for these words are curious because tus– means "no" and is equivalent in its meaning and use to Catalan, Occitan and French pas (negative particle).

So tusdombre and tusdeune literaly mean "no husband" and "no wife", respectively. They're old words to refer to any person that has lost his/her partner, but nowadays are only used for the meanings I showed: "ex-husband" and "ex-wife".

And now that I notice it... I need to make the words for "widower, widow"!

_________________
Un llapis mai dibuixa sense una mà.

Neat! Thanks!



IIANM Turkish has a term with that meaning, that sounds like it's related to the Turkish word for "wedding". I think it's düğün or something like that.

EDIT: This says it's dünür. Doesn't sound so related after all.
This mentions the Urdu word samadhî (masculine), samadhan (feminine).
This gives it in eight Californian languages and says it's the most common "three-step term".
This says "balae" is the Tagalog term.
This says "consuegros" is the Spanish term.