Family and relatives

In Chinese, the family is 家 jiā, exactly like the house. The character shows a roof, 宀, and under it a pig, 豕 shǐ. A pig under a roof ⟶ the house? The explanation raises a smile, and the specialists do not agree: some see in it the animal that was raised under the same roof as the people, others the animal offered to the ancestors, others again a mere phonetic element. I'm in no position to settle the matter. What is certain is that 家 is everywhere: 大家 dàjiā, “the big family” ⟶ everyone, 国家 guójiā, “the country-family” ⟶ the State, and even 作家 zuòjiā, the writer (家 then takes the meaning of “specialist”, as in 专家, the expert).

To say “my uncle”, on the other hand, you first need to know which uncle you mean. The father's older brother is a 伯伯 bóbo, his younger brother a 叔叔 shūshu, the mother's brother a 舅舅 jiùjiu, and the aunts' husbands are something else again: 姑父 gūfu or 姨父 yífu. Five words for one. Brothers and sisters are in the same boat: you almost never say “my brother” on its own, but 哥哥 gēge, the big one, or 弟弟 dìdi, the little one. Every kinship term actually says three things at once: the side (the father's or the mother's), the generation and relative age. It is the chapter students dread the most, and I understand them. But the system is very regular, and once you have grasped its logic, the list is much easier to remember.

Why 伯 for the elder and 叔 for the younger? Because ancient China numbered its sons: 伯 bó for the first, 仲 zhòng for the second, 叔 shū for the third, 季 jì for the last. Confucius, whose name was 孔丘 Kǒng Qiū, had the courtesy name 仲尼 Zhòngní: he was a second son. The habit of counting has not gone away. Among siblings, you are 老大 lǎodà, the eldest, or 老二 lǎo'èr, the second, and when you have several uncles, you tell them apart by their rank: 二舅 èrjiù, “second maternal uncle”, 三姑 sāngū, “third paternal aunt”.

On the mother's side, one small word gives away the old Chinese family: 外 wài, “outside”. The father's parents are 爷爷 yéye and 奶奶 nǎinai; the mother's, 外公 wàigōng and 外婆 wàipó. A son's children are 孙子 sūnzi, a daughter's 外孙 wàisūn, and a sister's son is a 外甥 wàisheng. Everything that passes through a woman is “outside”, because a daughter, when she married, left her family to join her husband's. The proverb was brutal: 嫁出去的女儿，泼出去的水, “a daughter married off is water thrown out”. Be careful, though, not to hear contempt in it on the lips of a Chinese person today: people say 外婆 with as much tenderness as “granny”. And in the North, people tend to say 姥姥 lǎolao and 姥爷 lǎoye, where the “outside” has disappeared.

Cousins follow the same logic, with two prefixes. 堂 táng is “the hall” of the family house: the children of the father's brothers bear the same surname as you and, in the old days, grew up under the same roof, in those big houses where people boasted of living 四世同堂 sì shì tóng táng, “four generations in the same hall”. They are the 堂哥, 堂姐, 堂弟 and 堂妹. All the other cousins, children of the father's sisters or of the mother's family, are 表 biǎo, “the exterior”: 表哥, 表姐, 表弟, 表妹. English makes no such distinction. Chinese always does, and will ask you on top of that whether the cousin is older or younger than you.

The in-laws are no exception. The husband's parents are 公公 gōnggong and 婆婆 pópo, the wife's 岳父 yuèfù and 岳母 yuèmǔ. 岳 means a great mountain, and the most widespread explanation goes back to the Tang. The minister 张说 Zhāng Yuè (说 is read yuè here), in charge of the great imperial ceremony on Mount Tai, is said to have had his son-in-law promoted several ranks at once. The emperor is surprised, and a court actor answers him: 此乃泰山之力也, “it is the strength of Mount Tai”. Ever since, the father-in-law has been 泰山 Tàishān, and as Tai is the first of the five sacred peaks, the 五岳 wǔ yuè, people ended up saying 岳父. The story may be too good to be true, but it has the merit of sticking in the mind. As for relations between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, 婆媳关系 póxí guānxi, they have been feeding Chinese TV soap operas for decades.

A surprise for the traveller: in China, strangers too are addressed with family words. A child says 叔叔 and 阿姨 āyí to any adult, the taxi driver becomes a 大哥 dàgē, the woman selling fruit a 大姐 dàjiě, the old man in the park a 大爷 dàye. Choose your word carefully: it makes the person older or younger, and a woman of forty whom you call 大妈 dàmā is unlikely to forget it (阿姨 or 大姐 are safer).

All this vocabulary comes out at once at New Year, when 七大姑八大姨 qī dà gū bā dà yí, “seven paternal aunts and eight maternal aunts” ⟶ the whole tribe of relatives, gathers around the table. Young Chinese people themselves get lost, so much so that there are apps that work out for them the exact term to use for “the son of my mother's older sister”. Behind this precision lies a moral code: everyone must know their 辈分 bèifen, their generational rank, to know what respect they owe to whom. Confucius put it in his own way: 父母在，不远游，游必有方, “While your parents are alive, do not travel far away. If you do travel, let it be in a fixed direction” (Analects IV, 19, on our page Chapter 4 of the Analects of Confucius). Children, old age and filial piety, 孝顺 xiàoshùn, have their place on the page The ages of life. Couples and bringing up children will soon have theirs.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order is shown stroke by stroke, with the arrow that gives the direction of the movement.