Image: Kinship Systems

Description: A two-generation comparison of the six major kinship systems (Hawaiian, Sudanese, Eskimo, Iroquois, Crow and Omaha).

Circle=female Triangle=male

Relatives marked with the same non-gray color are called by the same kinship term (ignoring sex-differentiation in the sibling/cousin generation, except where this becomes structurally-relevant under the Crow and Omaha systems).

Note that in some versions of the Crow and Omaha systems, the relatives shown as "cousin" in the Crow and Omaha boxes of the chart are actually referred to as either "son/daughter" or "nephew/niece" (different terms are used by male ego vs. female ego).

Also, in some languages with an Iroquois type of system, the relatives shown as "cousin" on the chart are referred to by the same terms used for "sister-in-law"/"brother-in-law" (since such cross-cousins — including remote classificatory cross-cousins — are preferred marriage partners). Similarly, the term for father's sister can be the same as that for mother-in-law, and the term for mother's brother the same as father-in-law.

The terms used for ego's generation (i.e. the sibling/cousin generation) are usually considered critical for classifying a language's kinship terms (some languages show discrepancies between ego's generation patterns and 1st ascending generation patterns). In anthropological terminology, the basic 1st ascending generation patterns are actually called "Generational" (what is shown in Hawaiian box in chart), "Lineal" (what is shown in Eskimo box in chart), "Bifurcate collateral" (what is shown in Sudanese box in chart), and "Bifurcate merging" (what is shown in the Iroquois, Crow and Omaha boxes in the chart).
Author: ZanderSchubert
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