Talk:Iroquois kinship

old talk
This is a great addition (if there is no copyright violation) but I think the chart needs to be modified (and I don't know how to do it). Terms like Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin are really appropriate to Eskimo kinship terminology and just not valid for B-M terminology. I would replace them either with MB, FZ, MBS, MBD, FZS, FZD, or the general word "affine." Slrubenstein

Thanks. I originally created the chart (using Visio - for a class of mine) without using Aunt and Uncle. I added them just before uploading so as to make the chart more clear to western readers. As for the use of "cousin" though, I have been instructed and found in my readings that this is acceptable. While Cross cousins are technically labelled as "Brother" and "Sister", it is extremely confusing to western (and introductory) readers to use the term. Therefore, I labelled them as cousins. For Parallel cousins, I believe you noticed that I did label them as "B" or "Z" in additon to grouping them as parallel. From what I have learned, the use of the term "cousin" is fairly vauge. Specifying parallel or cross clears up this problem though.

I think the article clearly explains the structure, but I could see where someone might misunderstand the chart. Do you think I should edit it to exclude Aunt and Uncle?

FYI, I'm currenly putting together charts (& articles) for all of the other kinship systems. Maclyn611 20:46, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I really would edit the chart -- I think unfamiliar terms are less confusing than familiar ones that really aren't accurate. The article is quite good, and perhaps all you'd need to add is some clarification of the terms in the chart.  I still would avoid "cousins" because one of the points of the article is that in B-F terminology there are two different kinds of cousins, cross and parallel.  The chart adequately identifies parallel cousins as siblings, but I think it would still confuse many to call cross cousins simply "cousins."  Slrubenstein

Any suggestions as to how I should label the cross-cousins? Every chart I've seen has them labelled as "Co". BTW, Eskimo kinship is now up. Maclyn611 03:34, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
 * Eskimo kinship looks great, good job. As for cross-cousins here -- well, I would either label them cross-cousins, or (and this is my preference) affine, with a note explaining what affine means (a term for people which is traced genealogically, but which is opposed to "kin" because it signifies people who may be or become related through marriage). Slrubenstein

Contradiction
the fourth sentence in the 'kinship'partagraph contradicts the third. in one you say they're called aunt and uncle;in the next mother- and father-in-law. i must be missing something, but it needs clarification.Toyokuni3 (talk) 14:26, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Genetic benefits
I was trying to see if there was any genetic basis for distinguishing parallel and cross cousins and I noticed that this system seems to guarantee that if you never marry a parallel cousin there is no chance of a child ending up with two copies of the same X-chromosome. This would offer the society good protection against X-linked recessive inheritance. None of the other chromosomes gain this protection because they don't make it externally visible which copy you got from each parent. &mdash;dgies tc 02:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * User:Dgies, That is only true for the mother's side. For the father's side, cross cousins can carry the same X-chromosome, thus, on the father's side, the parallel cousins would be the preferred group to avoid getting two copies of the same X-chromosome. Males act like X filters since theirs only come from their mother, and their sons do not inherit theirs. Their daughter's will inherit their X, but their father's brother's son will not, so their daughter could safely marry their brother's son without worry of duplicate pairs of X-chromosomes. Their sister's children, however, can receive the same X as they have. — al-Shimoni  (talk) 16:43, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I strongly doubt whether cross-cousin marriage originated or persisted for such reasons. Rather the main reason is unilineal exogamy -- if there are unilineal (either patrilineal or matrilineal) lineages or descent groups in a society, then cross-cousin marriage ensures that the spouses will always belong to two different lineages or descent groups. Cross-cousin marriage is certainly genetically preferable as a long-term practice to the unilineal endogamy (or father's brother's daughter marriage) found in certain Arab or Muslim social groups, but any genetic advantage over the situation when marriage is allowed with anyone but a few close relatives is probably quite small... AnonMoos (talk) 23:57, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

About the "Chinese" Section in This Article
Traditional Han Chinese families are patrilineal. It does not only makes distinctions with both "father and father's brothers" and "mothers and mother's sisters," but also differentiates older brothers and younger brothers no matter it's ego's, ego's father's, or ego's any other patrilineal blood relative's. The Han Chinese family system has no resemblance with the Iroquois system, instead, it should better be classified as Sudanese kinship system.

The section's description is incorrect unless it is actually referring to some Chinese minority peoples' familial system, but then again the description has no citations.

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Move to "iroquois kinship"
I understand that Haudenosaunee is the correct term for the confederacy known also as Iroquois, but per WP:COMMONNAME this article really needs to be located at Iroquois kinship there is a major literature that uses the term Iroquois kinship, and no corresponding literature under this name. Furthermore the term "iroquois kinship" does not refer specifically to the kinship system of the Haudenosaunee people, but to to all kinship systems that use bifurcate merging. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:00, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This ngram pretty much settles the question .·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:10, 7 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for handling the situation. I saw the original rename in my watchlist, but didn't really want to deal with it for various reasons (such as that I'm not sure when renaming an article over a redirect requires admin powers, and when it doesn't...) AnonMoos (talk) 23:46, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Iroquois kinship and bifurcate merging
I don't think that "Iroquois kinship" and "bifurcate merging" are absolute synonyms. "Iroquois" usually refers to terms on the sibling/cousin generation, while (at least in some usages) "bifurcate merging" refers more to the terms on the parental generation. Usually an Iroquois cousin/sibling terminology goes together with a bifurcate merging parent/aunt/uncle terminology, but a few languages have divergences between terminological sub-systems of different generations, and a bifurcate merging terminology on the parental generation also goes together with Crow and Omaha kinship terminologies... AnonMoos (talk) 00:08, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * It is true that they are not absolute synonyms since other systems also have the feature "bifurcate merging", but Iroquois is to my knowledge the only system that is also sometimes referred to as "bifurcate merging" instead of "iroquois".·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:38, 30 April 2018 (UTC)