The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language.[1] In the Burmese kinship system:[2]
Many of the kinship terms used in Burmese today are extant or derived from Old Burmese.[3] These include the terms used to reference siblings and in-laws.
The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:[4]
The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego:[4]
Kinship terms differ depending on the degree of formality, courtesy or intimacy. Also, there are regional differences in the terms used.
Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):
The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:[4]
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Father | Burmese: ဖခင် pha khin | Burmese: အဖေ a phay Burmese: ဖေဖေ phay phay | Father | ||
| Mother | Burmese: မိခင် mi khin | Burmese: အမေ a may Burmese: မေမေ may may | Mother | ||
| Elder brother (male ego) | Burmese: နောင် naung | Brother | |||
| Elder brother (female ego) | Burmese: ကို ko | Brother | |||
| Younger brother (male ego) | Burmese: ညီ nyi | Brother | |||
| Younger brother (female ego) | Burmese: မောင် maung | Brother | |||
| Older sister | Burmese: မ ma | Sister | |||
| Younger sister (male ego) | Burmese: နှမ hna ma | Sister | |||
| Younger sister (female ego) | Burmese: ညီမ nyi ma | Sister | |||
| Husband | Burmese: လင် lin | Husband | Informal: Burmese: ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: Burmese: ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun). | ||
| Wife | Burmese: မယား maya | Wife | Informal: Burmese: မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: Burmese: ဇနီး (zani). | ||
| Son | Burmese: သား tha | Son | |||
| Daughter | Burmese: သမီး thami | Daughter |
| Immediate lineage | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes | |
| Parent's father | Burmese: ဖိုး pho | Grandfather | |||
| Parent's mother | Burmese: ဖွား phwa | Grandmother | |||
| Father's elder brother | Burmese: ဘကြီး ba gyi | Uncle | |||
| Father's younger brother | Burmese: ဘလေး ba lay | Uncle | The youngest uncle may be called Burmese: ဘထွေး (ba dway). | ||
| Father's elder sister | Burmese: အရီးကြီး ayi gyi | Aunt | |||
| Father's younger sister | Burmese: အရီးလေး ayi lay | Aunt | The youngest aunt may be called Burmese: ထွေးလေး (dway lay). | ||
| Mother's elder brother | Burmese: ဦးကြီး u gyi | Uncle | Burmese: ဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete. | ||
| Mother's younger brother | Burmese: ဦးလေး u lay | Uncle | |||
| Mother's elder sister | Burmese: ဒေါ်ကြီး daw gyi | Aunt | Also Burmese: ကြီးတော် (kyidaw). | ||
| Mother's younger sister | Burmese: ဒေါ်လေး daw lay | Aunt | The youngest aunt may be called Burmese: ထွေးလေး (dway lay). | ||
| First cousin | Burmese: မောင်နှမ တဝမ်းကွဲ maung hnama ta wun gwe | First cousin | Lit. "siblings one womb removed" | ||
| Nephews and nieces | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes | |
| Sibling's son | Burmese: တူ tu | Nephew | |||
| Sibling's daughter | Burmese: တူမ tuma | Niece | |||
| In-laws | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relation | Term | Form of address | English equivalent | Notes | |
| Brother's wife (female ego) Husband's sister | Burmese: ယောက်မ yaungma | sister-in-law | |||
| Elder brother's wife (male ego) Wife's elder sister | Burmese: မရီး mayi | sister-in-law | |||
| Younger brother's wife (male ego) Wife's younger sister | Burmese: ခယ်မ khema | sister-in-law | |||
| Sister's husband Husband's younger brother Wife's brother | Burmese: ယောက်ဖ yaukpha | brother-in-law | |||
| Elder sister's husband (female ego) Husband's elder brother | Burmese: ခဲအို khe-oh | brother-in-law | |||
| Younger sister's husband (female ego) Husband's younger brother | Burmese: မတ် mat | brother-in-law | |||
| Son's wife | Burmese: ချွေးမ chwayma | daughter-in-law | |||
| Daughter's husband | Burmese: သမက် thamet | son-in-law | |||
| Spouse's father | Burmese: ယောက္ခထီး yaukkahti | father-in-law | |||
| Spouse's mother | Burmese: ယောက္ခမ yaukkhama | mother-in-law | |||