A Moiety-like System

[Latinist13]

I was listening to the Conlangery podcast and reading the links associated with it when an idea about kinship came to me. Now, this might have complications that I have not yet considered, but I thought about the possibility of a moiety-like system, similar to the Australian Aboriginal "skin" systems, with three groups. Now, these three groups, let's call them wolf, eagle, and dragon, each have their own roles in society, and people are born into one or another. Here is how I envision it working:

Eagle+Dragon= Wolf
Wolf+Dragon= Eagle
Eagle+Wolf= Dragon

In other words, the mother and father are from different groups, and their offspring belongs to a third group. Who their children marry depends on their gender, a male must marry someone from his father's group, and a daughter must marry someone from her mother's group.

So, are there any real world cultures that do this? What effects could this have on the culture?

[Torco]

doesn't look too stable: if one of the groups becomes a prestige status, the other two groups quickly get absorbed into it. Also, it kind of randomizes the proportions... how, then, does that society make it so if there's a lower demand of whatever group X does there's less of group X ??

[Kilanie]

doesn't look too stable: if one of the groups becomes a prestige status, the other two groups quickly get absorbed into it. Also, it kind of randomizes the proportions... how, then, does that society make it so if there's a lower demand of whatever group X does there's less of group X ??

Arranged marriages could work. And controlling how many children each couple has.

[Přemysl]

doesn't look too stable: if one of the groups becomes a prestige status, the other two groups quickly get absorbed into it. Also, it kind of randomizes the proportions... how, then, does that society make it so if there's a lower demand of whatever group X does there's less of group X ??

How would one group absorb the others? Lets say Wolf is the prestige and everyone that can wants to marry a Wolf. A Dragon would a Wolf and get Eagle children. An Eagle would marry a Wolf and get Dragon children. So if they marry the prestige class the would actually drastically reduce Wolf children. Now if instead people wanted to have prestigious children the only way that would happen is from Dragon and Eagle unions. Now this could diminish the the number of non-Wolves in the next generation, but that would only happen through union with undesirables. I don't know how many people would marry a loser and miss out on a chance to be associated with someone of prestige for their child to have more respect.

Also how does it randomize proportions. To me it seems to balance proportions. Lets say there are 4x Wolves, 2x Dragons, and 2x Eagles. If marriage is even then there would be 2x people involved in a Dragon-Eagle union, 2x people involve in a Dragon-Wolf union, 2x people involved in an Eagle-Wolf union, and 2x Wolves are stuck bothering the sheep since everyone else is married and a Wolf can't marry a Wolf. This then produces 2x Wolf, 2x Eagle, 2x Dragon sets of children and a lot of scared sheep. *

As for your last sentence I think you are asking if Dragons are say the shamans and you don't that many shamans how do you not get an over abundance of Dragons. These systems are better at balancing the groups, so the usage of the moitey would either need to be broad enough (e.g. shamans, gatherers, weavers etc) or their need to be more moities.

* The only way I can see this system crashing is if there is an influx of one moitey (at least the sum of the other moities) and people only marry them. Using my example above there would be 4x people involved in a Dragon-Wolf union and 4x people involved in an Eagle-Wolf union. This would produce 4x Eagle and 4x Dragon sets of children. This means in the next generation there would all be Wolves.

[Salmoneus]

doesn't look too stable: if one of the groups becomes a prestige status, the other two groups quickly get absorbed into it. Also, it kind of randomizes the proportions... how, then, does that society make it so if there's a lower demand of whatever group X does there's less of group X ??

... huh?

Skin groups don't have to have anything to do with occupation. In fact, I didn't realise they ever did. Randomising the proportions is part of the point, nay?


I'm not sure how the proposed system would work in practice, though. If a man marries someone from their father's group... that means he could marry his aunt, no?

Example:
DRAGON + eagle = WOLF & wolf.
WOLF + dragon = EAGLE
EAGLE has to marry a wolf. wolf, meanwhile, has to marry an EAGLE, so this system perfectly dictates nephew-aunt and uncle-niece marriages. Clearly something's gone wrong here...

Or perhaps, since your system fails to correctly regulate marriage, you're thinking of it being something very different - and the fact that you've actually got two different skin groups under one name (eD wolf vs. Ed wolf, for instance) supports that idea. In that case the question becomes: what is the purpose of this system? What is its function?


Prmysl: you're getting confused by the terminology in the OP. Nobody gets to chose what group they marry into - its determined by their parent's group. Don't think 'wolf', think 'wolf1' and 'wolf2'.



--

A more general question to both of you: how can one skin group have more 'prestige' than another skin group??

[Miekko]

Have you read up on how skin systems tend to be 'designed' in a way that minimizes the risk of accidental incest with half-siblings? Many, many traditional systems of permissibility promote cross-cousins for this reason (that is, your parents' other-gender siblings' children are preferable to e.g. your parents' same-gender siblings' children, because of the risk of one's dad impregnating one's uncle's wife)

[Salmoneus]

Have you read up on how skin systems tend to be 'designed' in a way that minimizes the risk of accidental incest with half-siblings? Many, many traditional systems of permissibility promote cross-cousins for this reason (that is, your parents' other-gender siblings' children are preferable to e.g. your parents' same-gender siblings' children, because of the risk of one's dad impregnating one's uncle's wife)

Also because cross-cousin marriage evolves into a neat multi-generational loop, whereas parallel marriage is just an oscillation.

But yes, skin groups prevent incest even if the women have sex with people they're not married to, and they distinguish parallel/cross going back several generations (though some groups only allow generalised cross-cousin marriage, not ACTUAL cross-cousin marriage, to further deincesticise) - the larger ones also prevent overly small marriage loops by producing a four-generation skin cycle in the female line.

This is why they're so important. They prevent incest without having to resort to having distinct families - the roles of familial kinship can be imprinted onto society as a whole, so that a whole class of people are, for instance, your aunt, or your parallel cousin, or your maternal grandfather, or your mother-in-law, regardless of whether there are any immediate actual blood ties between you. I think this is the real innovation of the skin group idea.

An interesting question, I think, is whether there can be skin systems that don't have moiety. I'm not aware of any, but I'm not sure why it couldn't happen...

[Torco]

the skin groups in the OP have "different roles in society". I assume that means occupations. Maybe I'm wrong in assuming that, on second thought.

a male must marry someone from his father's group, and a daughter must marry someone from her mother's group.

Oh, I missed this part. never mind the one group absorbing others.
Sal's question is good: why oh why would people do this?
But still, it sounds feasible.

[Latinist13]

I guess this should've been put in C&C Quickies. It was a thought experiment that I had that wasn't as fully formed as it should have been. As far as social roles are concerned, that was inspired by references to different ritualistic duties and dietary restrictions based on what skin a person belonged to, as mentioned on the 8th Conlangery podcast c17:00-19:00. As far as the issue of marrying aunts is concerned, there could be a taboo against marrying individuals from a previous generation or who are of a significant age difference.

Thus, a male might have to marry a maternal cousin and a female might have to marry a paternal cousin to avoid marrying someone they should not. As for why a culture might choose such a system, or under what circumstances it would evolve, I don't know, but it was something I envisioned as possibly feasible.

[Rodlox]

Now, these three groups, let's call them wolf, eagle, and dragon, each have their own roles in society, and people are born into one or another.

So, are there any real world cultures that do this? What effects could this have on the culture?

well, the question that goes through my mind when I read this, is: "do people raise children of their skin group? (regulated adoption for all)"

[Ollock]

Took a look on Wikipedia. From what I can gather, the usual arrangement when there is more than two skins is for marriage to be much more restricted -- each skin only being allowed to marry one other skin, with their offspring being of a third skin. This probably keeps populations of each skin fairly stable, though it looks like a massive headache for whoever actually regulates it, particularly for those societies with eight skins.

EDIT: Oh, and I should mention -- gender of parents is involved. So, a simple example with your dummy skins:

Dragon (father) + Wolf (mother) > Eagle (child)
Wolf (father) + Eagle (mother) > Dragon (child)
Eagle (father) + Dragon (mother) > Wolf (child)

Under this scenario, it is illegal for a man of Eagle skin to marry a woman of Wolf skin -- he must marry a Dragon, and his children will be Wolves.

[Latinist13]

Took a look on Wikipedia. From what I can gather, the usual arrangement when there is more than two skins is for marriage to be much more restricted -- each skin only being allowed to marry one other skin, with their offspring being of a third skin. This probably keeps populations of each skin fairly stable, though it looks like a massive headache for whoever actually regulates it, particularly for those societies with eight skins.

EDIT: Oh, and I should mention -- gender of parents is involved. So, a simple example with your dummy skins:

Dragon (father) + Wolf (mother) > Eagle (child)
Wolf (father) + Eagle (mother) > Dragon (child)
Eagle (father) + Dragon (mother) > Wolf (child)

Under this scenario, it is illegal for a man of Eagle skin to marry a woman of Wolf skin -- he must marry a Dragon, and his children will be Wolves.

That is only true, however if the Dragon is male and the Wolf is female, however if the reverse is true, then a man who is Eagle must marry a Wolf.

Now, these three groups, let's call them wolf, eagle, and dragon, each have their own roles in society, and people are born into one or another.

So, are there any real world cultures that do this? What effects could this have on the culture?

well, the question that goes through my mind when I read this, is: "do people raise children of their skin group? (regulated adoption for all)"

That does seem like an interesting scenario, where one is raised with one's siblings, parallel cousins, maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, and the spouses of their maternal uncles and paternal aunts. This could lead to some attitudes towards marriage and family that are very different from Western culture.

[brandrinn]

If I understand this system right, it does not minimize the chance of incest, which I assume is part of the point of moieties. With a moiety, the child cannot marry their siblings, and cannot marry immediate relatives of the father (if patrilineal) or mother (if matrilineal), because they are members of the same moiety.

This tripartite system, however, only rules out marriage between siblings, which could presumably be outlawed through special means without the need for a complex system. If you are a wolf, and you can marry dragons and eagles, then what prevents you from marrying your aunts and uncles? If there is an additional rules to outlaw such marriages, then why use this wolf/dragon/eagle system at all?

[Ashroot]

Would you mind if I used something like this for a royal family?

[Miekko]

This tripartite system, however, only rules out marriage between siblings, which could presumably be outlawed through special means without the need for a complex system. If you are a wolf, and you can marry dragons and eagles, then what prevents you from marrying your aunts and uncles? If there is an additional rules to outlaw such marriages, then why use this wolf/dragon/eagle system at all?

Many rule-systems for marriage with kin permit uncles and aunts.

[Ollock]

Took a look on Wikipedia. From what I can gather, the usual arrangement when there is more than two skins is for marriage to be much more restricted -- each skin only being allowed to marry one other skin, with their offspring being of a third skin. This probably keeps populations of each skin fairly stable, though it looks like a massive headache for whoever actually regulates it, particularly for those societies with eight skins.

EDIT: Oh, and I should mention -- gender of parents is involved. So, a simple example with your dummy skins:

Dragon (father) + Wolf (mother) > Eagle (child)
Wolf (father) + Eagle (mother) > Dragon (child)
Eagle (father) + Dragon (mother) > Wolf (child)

Under this scenario, it is illegal for a man of Eagle skin to marry a woman of Wolf skin -- he must marry a Dragon, and his children will be Wolves.

That is only true, however if the Dragon is male and the Wolf is female, however if the reverse is true, then a man who is Eagle must marry a Wolf.

Uhm, yes, yes, that is true.

This tripartite system, however, only rules out marriage between siblings, which could presumably be outlawed through special means without the need for a complex system. If you are a wolf, and you can marry dragons and eagles, then what prevents you from marrying your aunts and uncles? If there is an additional rules to outlaw such marriages, then why use this wolf/dragon/eagle system at all?

Many rule-systems for marriage with kin permit uncles and aunts.

Yes, the only universal incest taboo is parent-child. I don't think the three-skin system will prevent that on it's own, but more skins could be configured that way. Should be noted that I did not find any examples of three-skin systems when I looked it up: only four and eight, so I'm guessing that four- and eight-skin systems are the norm. So let's try a four-skin.

Someone else figure out how that will work. I have small children pounding on my door.

[Latinist13]

Would you mind if I used something like this for a royal family?

A tripartite moiety/skin system for a royal family? Please be sure to post a thread about it on ZBB, I'd love to see what you do with it.

[TomHChappell]

I was listening to the Conlangery podcast and reading the links associated with it when an idea about kinship came to me. Now, this might have complications that I have not yet considered, but I thought about the possibility of a moiety-like system, similar to the Australian Aboriginal "skin" systems, with three groups. Now, these three groups, let's call them wolf, eagle, and dragon, each have their own roles in society, and people are born into one or another. Here is how I envision it working:

Eagle+Dragon= Wolf
Wolf+Dragon= Eagle
Eagle+Wolf= Dragon

In other words, the mother and father are from different groups, and their offspring belongs to a third group. Who their children marry depends on their gender, a male must marry someone from his father's group, and a daughter must marry someone from her mother's group.

So, are there any real world cultures that do this? What effects could this have on the culture?

Something like this could happen using the Mapudungu Mundugumor "Rope" system. (There's a lot of controversy whether even the Mapudungu Mundugumor use it, though; some anthropologists think Margaret Mead just got it wrong.)

What makes a system of unilineal descent groups a "rope system" is that each person inherits membership in the group his/her opposite-sex parent belonged to.
A man belongs to the same Rope his mother belonged to.
A woman belongs to the same Rope her father belonged to.

Say you have a Dragon rope, an Eagle rope, and a Wolf rope.

Suppose a man can't marry a woman from the same rope as his mother nor as his sister; and a woman can't marry a man from the same rope as her father nor as her brother.

If a Dragon man married an Eagle woman, their sons would be Eagle men and their daughters would be Dragon women. So their Eagle sons would have to marry Wolf women while their Dragon daughters would have to marry Wolf men.

If an Eagle man married a Wolf woman, their sons would be Wolf men and their daughters would be Eagle women. So their Wolf sons would have to marry Dragon women while their Eagle daughters would have to marry Dragon men.

If a Wolf man married a Dragon woman, their sons would be Dragon men and their daughters would be Wolf women. So their Dragon sons would have to marry Eagle women while their Wolf daughters would have to marry Eagle men.

To sum up:
Dragon men marry Eagle women but Dragon women marry Wolf men.
Eagle men marry Wolf women but Eagle women marry Dragon men.
Wolf men marry Dragon women but Wolf women marry Eagle men.

Look up the Mapudungu Mundugumor; maybe they have a system like that.

[Latinist13]

If I understand this system right, it does not minimize the chance of incest, which I assume is part of the point of moieties. With a moiety, the child cannot marry their siblings, and cannot marry immediate relatives of the father (if patrilineal) or mother (if matrilineal), because they are members of the same moiety.

This tripartite system, however, only rules out marriage between siblings, which could presumably be outlawed through special means without the need for a complex system. If you are a wolf, and you can marry dragons and eagles, then what prevents you from marrying your aunts and uncles? If there is an additional rules to outlaw such marriages, then why use this wolf/dragon/eagle system at all?

If you are a wolf, you must either marry a dragon, if and only if your same gender parent is a dragon, or an eagle, if and only if your same gender parent is an eagle. This eliminates parent-child incest, some forms of uncle-niece and aunt-nephew incest, sibling incest, half-sibling incest, parallel cousin incest, along with cross cousins on the same gendered parent's side. Outside of a male's maternal cross cousins and a female's paternal cross cousins, the only choice would be certain intergenerational unions. This leads to more than a few disturbing scenarios, that I would not wish to contemplate, but, as one of the posters stated, some of those are not necessarily forbidden in many cultures.

I've come up with some ideas about how the raising of children and marriage could work in such a culture. The idea is that a child is looked after by his/her birth parents until s/he reaches a certain age (say five or seven years of age) after which the child is sent to live with other members of his/her moiety until s/he reaches marriageable age during which s/he learns the traditions and the skills of the trades practiced by his/her moiety.

I've considered some possible terms for such a culture's kinship system:

Acceptables- Ego is male: FZ or MBD
Ego is female: MB or FZS
^^^^^^
Assumes that uncle-neice unions and aunt-nephew, however distasteful to a (modern) Westerner (especially this one), are permissible.

Questionables- Ego is male: FZD
Ego is female: MBS
Kinsman- Ego is male: FZS
Ego is female: MBD
Brother- B or FBS or MZS
Sister- S or FBD or MZD
Father- F or FB or FFBS or FMZS
Mother- M or MZ or MMZD or MFBD
Teachers: MF or FM
Family¹: moiety, of greater importance, socially
Family²: nuclear family unit

[TomHChappell]

If I understand this system right, it does not minimize the chance of incest, which I assume is part of the point of moieties. With a moiety, the child cannot marry their siblings, and cannot marry immediate relatives of the father (if patrilineal) or mother (if matrilineal), because they are members of the same moiety.

This tripartite system, however, only rules out marriage between siblings, which could presumably be outlawed through special means without the need for a complex system. If you are a wolf, and you can marry dragons and eagles, then what prevents you from marrying your aunts and uncles? If there is an additional rules to outlaw such marriages, then why use this wolf/dragon/eagle system at all?

Not necessarily.
Suppose the Dragon and Eagle and Wolf are patriclans; everyone belongs to the same clan their father belonged to.
Suppose no-one can marry anyone belonging to the clan of either of their parents; equivalently, no-one can marry anyone either of whose parents belonged to one's own clan.

You have six kinds of men, then:
Dragon men with an Eagle mother can only marry Wolf women with an Eagle mother;
Dragon men with a Wolf mother can only marry Eagle women with a Wolf mother;
Eagle men with a Dragon mother can only marry Wolf women with a Dragon mother;
Eagle men with a Wolf mother can only marry Dragon women with a Wolf mother;
Wolf men with a Dragon mother can only marry Eagle women with a Dragon mother;
Wolf men with an Eagle mother can only marry Dragon women with an Eagle mother.

This is a second-cousin marriage system; a man can marry his father's mother's brother's son's daughter (FMBSD).

If a Dragon man has an Eagle mother, then his father has a Wolf mother and also his mother has a Wolf mother.

His sister is a Dragon woman with an Eagle mother. He can't marry her. The same applies to his same-father half-sisters, his same-mother half-sisters, his step-sisters, and to his father's brother's daughters, and to his mother's sister's daughters.

His mother is an Eagle woman with a Wolf mother; he can't marry her. The same applies to his mother's sisters.
His daughter is a Dragon woman with a Wolf mother. He can't marry her. The same applies to his brother's daughters.

His father's sister is a Dragon woman with a Wolf mother. He can't marry her.

His mother's mother is a Wolf woman with a Dragon mother. He can't marry her.

His sister's daughter is a Wolf woman with a Dragon mother. He can't marry her.

His mother's brother is an Eagle man with a Wolf mother; so his mother's brother's daughter is an Eagle woman with a Dragon mother. He can't marry her.
His father's sister is a Dragon woman with a Wolf mother; so his father's sister's daughter is an Eagle woman with a Dragon mother. He can't marry her.

His father's mother is a Wolf woman with an Eagle mother. He could marry her, but why would he want to? However he would marry some younger woman also in the Wolf clan and also with a mother from the Eagle clan, whom his grandmother might class as a "little sister".

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

A similar result would happen if the three clans were matriclans (everyone belonged to the same clan their mother belonged to), with the same rule that one's spouse couldn't be in the same clan as either of one's parents, or alternatively that one couldn't be in the same clan as either of one's parents-in-law. A man would marry his mother's mother's brother's daughter's daughter (MMBDD).

[Latinist13]

I was listening to the Conlangery podcast and reading the links associated with it when an idea about kinship came to me. Now, this might have complications that I have not yet considered, but I thought about the possibility of a moiety-like system, similar to the Australian Aboriginal "skin" systems, with three groups. Now, these three groups, let's call them wolf, eagle, and dragon, each have their own roles in society, and people are born into one or another. Here is how I envision it working:

Eagle+Dragon= Wolf
Wolf+Dragon= Eagle
Eagle+Wolf= Dragon

In other words, the mother and father are from different groups, and their offspring belongs to a third group. Who their children marry depends on their gender, a male must marry someone from his father's group, and a daughter must marry someone from her mother's group.

So, are there any real world cultures that do this? What effects could this have on the culture?

Something like this could happen using the Mapudungu "Rope" system. (There's a lot of controversy whether even the Mapudungu use it, though; some anthropologists think Margaret Mead just got it wrong.)

What makes a system of unilineal descent groups a "rope system" is that each person inherits membership in the group his/her opposite-sex parent belonged to.
A man belongs to the same Rope his mother belonged to.
A woman belongs to the same Rope her father belonged to.

Say you have a Dragon rope, an Eagle rope, and a Wolf rope.

Suppose a man can't marry a woman from the same rope as his mother nor as his sister; and a woman can't marry a man from the same rope as her father nor as her brother.

If a Dragon man married an Eagle woman, their sons would be Eagle men and their daughters would be Dragon women. So their Eagle sons would have to marry Wolf women while their Dragon daughters would have to marry Wolf men.

If an Eagle man married a Wolf woman, their sons would be Wolf men and their daughters would be Eagle women. So their Wolf sons would have to marry Dragon women while their Eagle daughters would have to marry Dragon men.

If a Wolf man married a Dragon woman, their sons would be Dragon men and their daughters would be Wolf women. So their Dragon sons would have to marry Eagle women while their Wolf daughters would have to marry Eagle men.

To sum up:
Dragon men marry Eagle women but Dragon women marry Wolf men.
Eagle men marry Wolf women but Eagle women marry Dragon men.
Wolf men marry Dragon women but Wolf women marry Eagle men.

Look up the Mapudungu; maybe they have a system like that.

That does sound like an interesting system... I just might have to use it sometime. It would be interesting to research how such a system, or any kinship system, for that matter, could develop. This has kind of developed into a side project as of late.

For my main project, not the one in this thread, the culture is polygamous. The most common arrangement is for a man and his brothers, or paternal half brothers, marry a woman and her sisters or maternal half sisters (sororal-fraternal polygynandry). Descent is traced mother to daughter and father to son- a daughter seldom inherits her father's property and a son seldom inherits his mother's property. A man may not marry someone from his patriclan nor a woman may marry someone from her matriclan. It is encouraged that a person either marry the children of one of his/her parents' cross cousins, or a third cousin whose grandparents and the person's grandparents were cross cousins, depending on what clans the person belongs to.

I've given further thought as to how my system, as stated in the original post, would work: The children would be raised by their parents until they could sit upright, walk and talk. At that point, they are sent to a community made up of other members of their own moiety where they are raised until they reach marriageable age. Then, a member of that moiety community is sent to the a village of the adult child's father's moiety, if male, or adult child's mother's moiety, if female, to find a suitable spouse who is married to the young man or woman. The marriage is meant primarily as a way to produce children. If no children are produced within a certain length of time, say, seven years, then the couple is to separate, with each person returning to his/her moiety. If children are produced, the cycle would repeat itself, with the couple separating after seven years or after the last child to be born in that period has reached the age where they would be sent to their own moiety, whichever comes second.

[TomHChappell]

In my first concultural kinship system, there are three patriclans, three matriclans, and three "ropes", for a total of 108 kinds of man and 108 kinds of woman. A person can't marry someone in the same patriclan nor matriclan nor rope as himself/herself nor either of his/her parents; equivalently a person can't acquire parents-in-law who share a clan or a rope with him/her.

What the ropes contribute to that system is that a man's sister's husband and his wife's brother won't be brothers (nor will they be the same person, of course). A man and his sister don't belong to the same rope; he belongs to their mother's rope, while she belongs to their father's rope.

In that system a man marries (a girl classified as) his mother's father's mother's brother's daughter's son's daughter (MFMBDSD). It's a third-cousin marriage system.
There are "other relationships" -- by our standards -- which also apply between two people who can marry, but the conculture classifies them as equivalent.
In that system, too, a man's wife's brother's wife's father (WBWF), and his mother's brother's wife's brother (MBWB), are classified as the same type of relative, and as each other's brothers.

Leaving the ropes out of it, to simplify it, but retaining the three patriclans and the three matriclans, there'd be 36 kinds of men and 36 kinds of women. A lot of people probably think 36 is simpler than 108. (Since it's just two 6-kind systems operating simultaneously, maybe it's really even simpler yet.)

Let's suppose the patriclans are Ash, Beech, and Chestnut; and the matriclans are Dragon, Eagle, and Fox.

Ash people had Ash fathers, but they may have had Beech mothers or Chestnut mothers.
Likewise, Beech people had Beech fathers but may have had Ash or Chestnut mothers; and Chestnut people had Chestnut fathers but may have had Ash or Beech mothers.

Similarly, Dragon people had Dragon mothers, but they may have had Eagle fathers or Fox fathers; Eagle people had Eagle mothers but may have had Dragon or Fox fathers; and Fox people had Fox mothers but may have had Dragon or Eagle mothers.

An Ash person with a Beech mother has to marry a Chestnut person with a Beech mother;
an Ash person with a Chestnut mother has to marry a Beech person with a Chestnut mother;
a Beech person with an Ash mother has to marry a Chestnut person with an Ash mother;
a Beech person with a Chestnut mother has to marry an Ash person with a Chestnut mother;
a Chestnut person with an Ash mother has to marry a Beech person with an Ash mother;
a Chestnut person with a Beech mother has to marry an Ash person with a Beech mother.

A Dragon person with an Eagle father has to marry a Fox person with an Eagle father;
a Dragon person with a Fox father has to marry an Eagle person with a Fox father;
an Eagle person with a Dragon father has to marry a Fox person with a Dragon father;
an Eagle person with a Fox father has to marry a Dragon person with a Fox father;
a Fox person with a Dragon father has to marry an Eagle person with a Dragon father;
a Fox person with an Eagle father has to marry a Dragon person with an Eagle father.

An Ash/Dragon man with a Beech/Dragon mother and an Ash/Eagle father would have to marry a Chestnut/Fox woman with a Beech/Fox mother and a Chestnut/Eagle father.
His sister would be an Ash/Dragon woman, and of course she'd have the same Beech/Dragon mother he had, and the same Ash/Eagle father he had. She would have to marry a Chestnut/Fox man with a Beech/Fox mother and a Chestnut/Eagle father. That man could very easily be her brothe's wife's brother; and, in such a system, would be so classified.

An Ash/Dragon person with a Beech/Dragon mother and an Ash/Fox father would have to marry a Chestnut/Eagle spouse with a Beech/Eagle mother and a Chestnut/Fox father.
An Ash/Dragon person with a Chestnut/Dragon mother and an Ash/Eagle father would have to marry a Beech/Fox spouse with a Chestnut/Fox mother and a Beech/Eagle father.
An Ash/Dragon person with a Chestnut/Dragon mother and an Ash/Fox father would have to marry a Beech/Eagle spouse with a Chestnut/Eagle mother and a Beech/Fox father.

And so on.

[Gojera]

Wow, that's...complicated. It seems like finding marriage partners would be quite difficult, and you'd have to draw from a very large population group to get a plausibly large pool of possibilities. Probably OK in a large city, but in small town you'd have to shop around in a large region that uses the same system. And you'd probably need a class of professional marriage brokers.

[TomHChappell]

Wow, that's...complicated.

I've read of a real-life Prescriptive Marriage System with 18 types, but never of one IRL with 36 types.

But the second system I described isn't really that complicated; it's one 6-type 3-patriclan system (which btw occurs IRL) operating concurrently with one 6-type 3-matriclan system (which also occurs IRL). And it's just one step more complicated than the real-life 18-type system I've read about.

There are real-life patriclan prescriptive marrriage systems even more complicated than the 6-type 3-patriclan system I mentioned; there are also real-life matriclan prescriptive marriage systems even more complicated than the 6-type 3-matriclan system I mentioned.

There are real-life Prescriptive Marriage Systems (or, at least, "Classifcatory" Kinship Systems) in which both a patriclan system and a matriclan system operate concurrently.

(And if the Mapudungu Mundugumor and/or other peoples indeed do have "rope" system, as Margaret Mead reports and others dispute, some of them may also have either a patriclan system or a matriclan system operating concurrently with it.)

The 108-type system, OTOH, is one step more complicated than that; I think there probably isn't anything like it in real life. The "rope" seems to be very rare (if it exists at all) IRL; so the odds are against any people having a patriclan system and a matriclan system and a rope system all operating concurrently. It's purely fictional.

It seems like finding marriage partners would be quite difficult, and you'd have to draw from a very large population group to get a plausibly large pool of possibilities. Probably OK in a large city, but in small town you'd have to shop around in a large region that uses the same system. And you'd probably need a class of professional marriage brokers.

Thank you! I had thought all of that; I'm glad to see someone else thinks so, too.

Yes, if a settlement doesn't have a marriageable representative of every type-and-sex combination, then it would reasonably be regarded as "small" or "podunk" or "jerkwater" or "the back of beyond" or "East Jesus" or whatever by the young marriageables in it. They'd want to get out and go somewhere more populous where the chances of finding a suitable partner were higher. Two small-town people who married would have a good chance of coming from different settlements; rural couples would almost surely come from distant farms/ranches/stations/whatever. Professional or semi-pro matchmakers would have a very useful function.

In the 36-type system I discussed above, if a town had residents from all three of the patriclans and also had residents from all three of the matriclans, it might be a bit closer to maritally self-sufficient; indeed, after a few generations, it might be self-sufficient.

But even in a big city if boy meets girl there's a huge chance (107 to 1, or, 35 to 1, depending which system we're talking about) they're "too closely related" to marry (one of them shares a clan either with the other or with one of the other's parents). Even in the 6-type systems the odds are 5 to 1 they're not eligible to each other.

You could better the odds to about 50%-50% by having 6 patriclans and 6*5 = 30 types, or 6 matriclans and 6*5 = 30 types; each type would find 4*4 = 16 other types marriageable. But obviously that wouldn't be a prescriptive marriage system.

Or, you could better the odds to about 50%-50% by having 10 patriclans and 10 matriclans, and (10*9)^2 = 8,100 types ; each type would find (8*8)^2 = 4,096 other types marriageable. But that also wouldn't be a prescriptive marriage system.

(And if you used 15 patriclans and 15 matriclans and 15 ropes you'd have (15*14)^3 types, each of whom would find (13*13)^3 other types eligible. Still not prescriptive.)

No prescriptive marriage system has odds better than 50%-50%; at a minimum, around half the nubile women an eligible bachelor is likely to meet are going to be classed as unmarriageably related to him.

If it's not just a moiety system, at least around two-thirds of them will be unmarriageable to him.

So those 5 to 1 odds aren't unrealistic; in fact, neither are 17 to 1 odds.

But maybe 35 to 1 doesn't occur IRL; and I seriously doubt 107 to 1 does.

[Latinist13]

Wow, that's...complicated. It seems like finding marriage partners would be quite difficult, and you'd have to draw from a very large population group to get a plausibly large pool of possibilities. Probably OK in a large city, but in small town you'd have to shop around in a large region that uses the same system. And you'd probably need a class of professional marriage brokers.

Since a class of professional marriage brokers would be necessary, couldn't such a class grow to form a ruling class in the society, as they would have the power to determine who can marry whom, which could have major consequences in any society?