Look up niece in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up nephew in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Part of a series on the
Anthropology of kinship
Basic concepts Family Lineage Affinity Consanguinity Marriage Incest taboo Endogamy Exogamy Moiety Monogamy Polygyny Polygamy Concubinage Polyandry Bride price Bride service Dowry Parallel / cross cousins Cousin marriage Levirate Sororate Posthumous marriage Joking relationship Clan Cohabitation Fictive / Milk / Nurture kinship Descent Cognatic / Bilateral Matrilateral Lineal Collateral House society Avunculate Linealities Ambilineality Unilineality Matrilineality Patrilineality Household forms and residence Extended Matrifocal Matrilocal Neolocal Nuclear Patrilocal
Terminology Kinship terminology Classificatory terminologies By group Iroquois Crow Omaha Eskimo (Inuit) Hawaiian Sudanese Dravidian (debated)
Case studies Australian Aboriginal Burmese Chinese Philippine Polyandry in Tibet / in India Feminist Chambri Mosuo Sexuality Coming of Age in Samoa
Major theorists Diane Bell Tom Boellstorff Jack Goody Gilbert Herdt Don Kulick Roger Lancaster Louise Lamphere Eleanor Leacock Claude Lévi-Strauss Bronisław Malinowski Margaret Mead Henrietta Moore Lewis H. Morgan Stephen O. Murray Michelle Rosaldo Gayle Rubin David M. Schneider Marilyn Strathern
Related articles Alliance theory Matrilineal / matrilocal societies Feminist anthropology Sex and Repression in Savage Society Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship "The Traffic in Women"
Social anthropology Cultural anthropology
v t e

Part of a series on
Anthropology
Outline History
Types Archaeological Biological Cultural Linguistic Social
Archaeological Aerial Aviation Battlefield Biblical Bioarchaeological Environmental Ethnoarchaeological Experiential Feminist Forensic Maritime Paleoethnobotanical Zooarchaeological
Biological Anthrozoological Biocultural Evolutionary Forensic Molecular Neurological Nutritional Paleoanthropological Primatological
Social Cultural Applied Art Cognitive Cyborg Development Digital Ecological Environmental Economic Political economy Feminist Food Historical Institutional Kinship Legal Media Medical Museums Musical Political Psychological Public Religion Symbolic Transpersonal Urban Visual
Linguistic Anthropological Descriptive Ethnological Ethnopoetical Historical Semiotic Sociological
Research framework Anthropometry Ethnography cyber Ethnology Cross-cultural comparison Participant observation Holism Reflexivity Thick description Cultural relativism Ethnocentrism Emic and etic
Key concepts Culture Development Ethnicity Evolution sociocultural Gender Kinship and descent Meme Prehistory Race Society Value Colonialism / Postcolonialism
Key theories Actor–network theory Alliance theory Cross-cultural studies Cultural materialism Culture theory Diffusionism Feminism Historical particularism Boasian anthropology Functionalism Interpretive Performance studies Political economy Practice theory Structuralism Post-structuralism Systems theory
Lists Anthropologists by nationality Anthropology by year Bibliography Journals List of indigenous peoples Organizations
v t e

In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of an individual's sibling or sibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblings aunt or uncle. The gender-neutral term nibling has been used in place of the common terms, especially in specialist literature.^[1]

As aunt/uncle and niece/nephew are separated by one generation, they are an example of a second-degree relationship. They are 25% related by blood, unless related by marriage.

Lexicology

The word nephew is derived from the French word neveu which is derived from the Latin nepos.^[2] The term nepotism, meaning familial loyalty, is derived from this Latin term.^[3] Niece entered Middle English from the Old French word nece, which also derives from Latin nepotem.^[4] The word nibling, derived from sibling, is a neologism suggested by Samuel Martin in 1951 as a cover term for "nephew or niece"; it is not common outside of specialist literature.^[1] Sometimes in discussions involving analytic material or in abstract literature, terms such as male nibling and female nibling are preferred to describe nephews and nieces respectively.^[5] Terms such as nibling are also sometimes viewed as a gender-neutral alternative to terms which may be viewed as perpetuating the overgenderization of the English language.^[6]

These French-derived terms displaced the Middle English nyfte, nift, nifte, from Old English nift, from Proto-Germanic *niftiz (“niece”); and the Middle English neve, neave, from Old English nefa, from Proto-Germanic *nefô (“nephew”).^{[7][8][9][10]}

Culture

Traditionally, a nephew was the logical recipient of his uncle's inheritance if the latter did not have a successor. A nephew might have more rights of inheritance than the uncle's daughter.^[11][12]

In social environments that lacked a stable home or environments such as refugee situations, uncles and fathers would equally be assigned responsibility for their sons and nephews.^[13]

Among parents, some cultures have assigned equal status in their social status to daughters and nieces. This is, for instance, the case in Indian communities in Mauritius,^[14] and the Thai Nakhon Phanom Province, where the transfer of cultural knowledge such as weaving was distributed equally among daughters, nieces and nieces-in-law by the Tai So community,^[15] and some Garifuna people that would transmit languages to their nieces.^[16] In some proselytizing communities the term niece was informally extended to include non-related younger female community members as a form of endearment.^[17] Among some tribes in Manus Province of Papua New Guinea, women's roles as sisters, daughters and nieces may have taken precedence over their marital status in social importance.^[18]

Additional terms

• A grandnephew or grandniece is the grandson or granddaughter of one's sibling.^[19] Also called great-nephew / great-niece.^[20]
• A half-niece or half-nephew is the child of one's half-sibling, related by 12.5%.^[21][22]

In some cultures and family traditions, it is common to refer to cousins with one or more removals to a newer generation using some form of the word niece or nephew. For more information see cousin.