Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/92

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KINSHIP AND

the four chief categories of cousin, but also the four chief kinds of uncle or aunt, viz., the father's brother, the father's sister, the mother's brother and the mother's sister, all of whom are habitually classed together in our system, while some of them are classed with the father or mother in the classificatory system. The Semitic and Nilotic terminology is such as would follow from a form of social organisation in which the more intimate relationships of the family in the narrow sense are definitely recognised, but yet certain uncles, aunts, and cousins are of so much importance as to make it necessary for social purposes that they shall be denoted exactly. The brothers of the father and the unmarried sisters of the father would be of the same social group as the father, while the brothers and unmarried sisters of the mother would be of a different social group, which would account for their distinctive nomenclature, while within the social group it would be necessary to distinguish the father from his brothers. It would be too cumbrous to call this variety of system after the extended family, and I suggest that it should be called the "kindred" system.

Analogy with other parts of the world suggests that all those of the same generation in the social group formed by the extended family may once have been classed together under one term, and that, as later there arose social motives requiring the distinction of different relatives so classed together, descriptive terms came into use to make