Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/32

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20
KINSHIP AND

recorded elsewhere, but I propose to begin with a long familiar mode of terminology which accompanies that widely distributed custom known as the cross-cousin marriage. In the more frequent form of this marriage a man marries the daughter either of his mother's brother or of his father's sister; more rarely his choice is limited to one of these relatives.

Such a marriage will have certain definite consequences. Let us take a case in which a man marries the daughter of his mother's brother, as is represented in the following diagram:

DIAGRAM I[1]

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
B=a
 
 
 
 
A=b
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
C
 
dEf
 

One consequence of the marriage between C and d will be that A, who before the marriage of C was only his mother's brother, now becomes also his wife's father, while b, who before the marriage was the mother's brother's wife of C, now becomes his wife's mother. Reciprocally, C, who before his marriage had been the sister's son of A and the husband's sister's son of b, now becomes their son-in-law. Further, E and f, the other children of A and b, who before the marriage had been only the cousins of C, now becomes his wife's brother and sister.

  1. In this and other diagrams capital letters are used to represent men and the smaller letters women.