Talk:Uncle

Say uncle!
I'm looking for an article about "uncle" in the expression "Say uncle", which bullies force their victims to say. From the context it is used in I guess I understand what it means but I don't have the slightest idea of its origin. I would greatly appreciate if anyone could write something about it.
 * A non-american (as can be seen in my poor spelling and grammar) visitor ;-)212.65.19.208 23:20, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Seems ;ike something that should be in Uncle, although it is not.. --Mysidia (talk) 23:28, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I took a look there also, but I wasn't sure where the right place for somethin like that would be. On the Internet I found something in the "Urban Dictionary". The entry there defines the meaning in the mentioned context as something like "surrender" but doesn't give any hints about the origin.
 * The same strange visitor (can anyone guess where I'm from? :-) ... and no cheating by looking up my IP) --212.65.19.208 23:42, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's from the use of 'uncle' as a term of respect, mentioned in this article? I'm only guessing though. --Oolong (talk) 19:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * From the article: "'say uncle' or just 'uncle'". No, "Uncle!" is the

submission term, not "say uncle". "Say uncle" is the demand for submission. "Say uncle" and "Uncle!" are opposites. One is the demand for submission, the other is the submission. The article treats them as equivalent, which is wrong, so I'm changing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 (talk) 20:24, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Offensive...?
Uncle Remus refers to 'uncle', in that context, as something that many people find offensive, but there's nothing about that here. Should there be? For context, the 1913 Webster entry for 'uncle' includes this: An eldery man; -- used chiefly as a kindly or familiar appellation, esp. (Southern U. S.) for a worthy old negro; as, "Uncle Remus." [Colloq.] --Oolong (talk) 19:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Term of Respect?
"It is also a title of respect for elders (for example older cousins, neighbors, acquaintances, as well as total strangers), especially in Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, China, Maori culture, and most Pacific Islands."

Could someone go through this list and separate out the people who actually use the term 'Uncle' out of respect, and those which use an equivalent word in their own language? I'm fairly certain that Russian and Japanese, at least, do not need to borrow an English word to create a term of respect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.13.147.17 (talk) 19:19, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The list of locations has been remove which probably makes the most sense since I'm sure it was unsourced or poorly sourced. I'd note though that there's no reason to assuming any "borrowing" or "own language". The logical reading of the text is that it's the word they use when they speak English, and possibly they use an equivalent word in a different language when speaking that language. Just because someone is Russian or Japanese doesn't mean they never speak English. Indeed in the case of 'total strangers', it may be reasonable to expect given (for better or worse) the global dominance that English will often be the language spoken when engaging with foreign tourists. Nil Einne (talk) 03:53, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Other Non-Direct Uncles?
What relation would my Grandfather's brother's son, be to me? Would he be an Uncle once removed?Wenin (talk) 16:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * First cousin once removed. (Your father and him are first cousins, so you and him are first cousins once removed.) 91.105.31.47 (talk) 12:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Great uncle
The article states: "Although the term "great uncle/aunt" is often used, it is, strictly speaking, incorrect." The reference that claims that "great-uncle" is not correct is very biased. The terms grandaunt and granduncle were first used in the 1800s while greataunt and granduncle were used in the 1600s. Apparently some Americans in the 1800s forgot the middle-English origins of the relationship and reanalysed it in terms of "grand". Someone later invented the idea that "great" is an incorrect prefix for aunt and uncle. Not sure what references could be used to refute this error but the usage of great-aunt and great uncle long precede this usage. Dutch uses a similar construction grootoom for great-uncle. I suppose the logic in claiming that it is not correct is at fault: Since grand means a familial relationship one step removed, and great means a familial relationship once removed that in all other cases is associated with grand, it then must imply that using great for some familial relationship (aunt or uncle) cannot be correct. However, it is one thing to claim this, but another thing to be correct. Obviously the terms great-aunt and great-uncle were used prior to any dictionaries making a claim about the prefixes grand or great. Perhaps the terms grandaunt and granduncle were coined by Webster along with his correction of the not correct English? Twocs (talk) 09:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. Not only is the second paragraph prescriptive rather than descriptive, it has an entirely inappropriate tone for an encyclopedia. Particularly the final sentence, which ends, "...so to be consistent why use "great" in conjunction with uncles and aunts." Most of it needs to be deleted entirely.174.60.46.129 (talk) 16:24, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Also agree. Great uncle is a much more popular usage . I've removed all the contentious content. Martin Tod (talk) 09:47, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I thought we were going to add Grunkle here because when I made that wiki page Largo Plazo said and I quote "that article would created under the topic Grand uncle because that would still be the main word for the concept. The term Grunkle would then redirect there." Source of my claim is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Grunkle#Contested_deletion Dogsteeves (talk) 19:34, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
Uncle and Aunt are currently separate articles but overlap too much in their content. I suggest a merger to uncle and aunt similar to nephew and niece. There are more important familial relations where the genders aren't separated as they are in this case. Brother and sister both redirect to sibling while grandmother and grandfather both redirect to grandparents.


 * Support
 * 1) Support as nominator. Gizza  ( t )( c ) 04:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. Merging two unreferenced messes into one at least reduces the number of problems. And while I can see the merged articles having separate subsections for some aspects, I certainly don't see the need to have them split at the current moment. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:07, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 3) Weak support I agree with the rationale provided by the nominator, but the grandparent comparison concerns me. If you go to Grandparent, you'll note that there's no interwiki link to Swedish, because Swedish has no single word for "grandparent" — they have separate words for different "types" of grandparents ([discussion]), just like we have separate words for different types of parents' siblings and spouses thereof.  I'm concerned that merging these two will cause problems with Wikidata; it might not be a problem for most articles, but for such a basic topic, there are tons of articles on other projects that will stop having any link to a merged Uncle and aunt article.  Nyttend (talk) 11:46, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 4) Support - Per nom; there is no need for separate entries for this basic topic.  GabeMc  (talk&#124;contribs)  17:23, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 5) Support. If there's one article for siblings, there should be one article for parents' sibilings, by an a fortiori. -- Ypnypn (talk) 18:12, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * 6) Support, that might increase the quality of these articles. Uncle and aunt are barely even encyclopedic topics to begin with, so having two separate stubs for the topic in the first place is very odd, especially when articles like sibling exist. I'm not even really sure if this topic should have an article in the first place, and would support a move to Wiktionary. What kind of sources could we use for this article? ~ Mable ( chat ) 14:43, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
 * 7) Support move to Aunt and Uncle - (I've always used "Aunt & Uncle" so to me makes more sense this way) - I was originally gonna Oppose per the fact "Although they're related they're still 2 different things entirely" .... I then realized Nan/Grandad redirect back to Grandparents and Brother/Sister redirects back to Sibling so IMHO it would now make sense to redirect this too, It's better to have one big article IMHO... – Davey 2010 Talk 14:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I have left a message on the talk pages of recent editors to these articles and on the relevant WikiProject talk pages notifying them on this proposal. Gizza ( t )( c ) 04:47, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose
 * 1) Oppose if anyone were to actually dive into the literature on kinship, there would be more than enough to write about each of the two categories. They are both highly salient cultural categories and the fact that by necessity they overlap to some degree should have no impact on whether they are treated separately. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 2) Oppose I doubt this is a good idea unless strong evidence is provided to the contrary by experts on kinship relations. Cobblet (talk) 23:58, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 3) Oppose per Maunus. PointsofNoReturn (talk) 22:44, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
 * 4) Oppose per Maunus. Neljack (talk) 01:33, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose. Good grief, they are two different things, two completely different words, two different genders. And each has its own set of connotations, usages, legends, phrases, idioms, etc. Not to mention the confusion created when foreign-wikis link to the article if they were joined. Softlavender (talk) 07:12, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 6) Oppose, per Maunus. -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 01:30, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * 7) Oppose unless mother and father are also merged. I like how u rotate (talk) 09:22, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Discussion
 * Nobody has still given an explanation as to why brother/sister and uncle/aunt should be treated differently. Not to mention grandfather/grandmother. Non-English languages wikis links will be a headache no matter what path is chosen. There are languages with 4 different common words for each grandparent unlike English. Gizza (t)(c) 09:44, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

30% genetic overlap?
Surely this should be 25%. Kostaki mou (talk) 16:54, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

List of uncles
Why have a long list of uncles in music, film, tv etc? These in popular culture-sections are getting out of hand. Edward Mordake (talk) 10:27, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Uncle-in-law?
Isn't the whole bit about Uncle-In-Laws nonsense? At least in English. Your aunt's husband is commonly referred to as your uncle (by marriage) and never as your uncle-in-law. Granted it's a failing of the English language that there is no distinction between your parents siblings and the spouses who marry them. It's a quirk of the language but there it is. If you marry a woman her sons from her previous marriage become your stepsons, the guys who marry your daughters are your son-in-laws but when you marry your wife her nephews become your nephews as well. There's no new terminology there.

And is there even a term for your spouse's aunts or uncles to begin with?

--Meteor

A great-uncle is the brother of one's grandparent
However, Wiktionary reads "a brother or brother-in-law of one's grandparent." --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:45, 7 August 2021 (UTC)