Burmese kinship

The Burmese kinship system is a fairly complex system used to define family in the Burmese language.[1] In the Burmese kinship system:[2]

• Maternal and parental lineages are not distinguished, except for members of the parents' generations.
• Relative age of a sibling relation is considered.
• Gender of the relative is distinguished.
• Generation from ego is indicated.

History

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.[3]

Grades of kinship

The Burmese kinship system identifies and recognizes six generations of direct ancestors, excluding the ego:[4]

1. Be (ဘဲ) - great-grandfather's great-grandfather (6 generations removed)
2. Bin (ဘင်) - great-grandfather's grandfather (5 generations removed)
3. Bi (ဘီ) - great-grandfather's father (4 generations removed)
4. Bay (ဘေး) - great-grandfather (3 generations removed)
5. Pho (ဘိုး) - grandfather (2 generations removed)
6. Phay (ဖေ) - father (1 generation removed)

The Burmese kinship system identifies seven generations of direct descendants, excluding the ego:[4]

1. Tha (သား) - (1 generation removed)
2. Myi (မြေး) - (2 generations removed)
3. Myit (မြစ်) - (3 generations removed)
4. Ti (တီ) - (4 generations removed)
5. Tut (တွတ်) or Hmyaw (မျှော့) - (5 generations removed)
6. Kyut (ကျွတ်) - (6 generations removed)
7. Hset (ဆက်) - (7 generations removed)

Extended family and terminology

Kinship terms differ depending on the degree of formality, courtesy or intimacy. Also, there are regional differences in the terms used.

Common suffixes

• female: မ (ma)
• male: ဖ (hpa)

Burmese also possesses kin numeratives (in the form of suffixes):

• eldest: ကြီး[5] (gyi) or အို[5] (oh)
• second youngest: လတ်[5] (lat)
• youngest: လေး[5] (lay), ထွေး[5] (htway), or ငယ်[5] (nge)

Relationships

The Burmese kinship system also recognizes various relationships between family members that are not found in English, including:[4]

• တူအရီး (tu ayi) - relationship between uncle or aunt and nephew or niece
• ခမည်းခမက် (khami khamet) - relationship between parents of a married couple
• မယားညီအစ်ကို (maya nyi-ako) - relationship between the husbands of two sisters
• သမီးမျောက်သား (thami myauk tha) - relationship between cousins, used in Arakanese language[6]

Members of the nuclear family

Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Father	ဖခင် pha khin	အဖေ a phay ဖေဖေ phay phay	Father
Mother	မိခင် mi khin	အမေ a may မေမေ may may	Mother
Elder brother (male ego)	နောင် naung		Brother
Elder brother (female ego)	ကို ko		Brother
Younger brother (male ego)	ညီ nyi		Brother
Younger brother (female ego)	မောင် maung		Brother
Older sister	မ ma		Sister
Younger sister (male ego)	နှမ hna ma		Sister
Younger sister (female ego)	ညီမ nyi ma		Sister
Husband	လင် lin		Husband	Informal: ယောက်ျား (yaukkya). Formal: ခင်ပွန်း (khinbun).
Wife	မယား maya		Wife	Informal: မိန်းမ (meinma). Formal: ဇနီး (zani).
Son	သား tha		Son
Daughter	သမီး thami		Daughter

Members of the extended family

Immediate lineage
Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Parent's father	ဖိုး pho		Grandfather
Parent's mother	ဖွား phwa		Grandmother
Father's elder brother	ဘကြီး ba gyi		Uncle
Father's younger brother	ဘလေး ba lay		Uncle	The youngest uncle may be called ဘထွေး (ba dway).
Father's elder sister	အရီးကြီး ayi gyi		Aunt
Father's younger sister	အရီးလေး ayi lay		Aunt	The youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
Mother's elder brother	ဦးကြီး u gyi		Uncle	ဝရီး (wayi) is now obsolete.
Mother's younger brother	ဦးလေး u lay		Uncle
Mother's elder sister	ဒေါ်ကြီး daw gyi		Aunt	Also ကြီးတော် (kyidaw).
Mother's younger sister	ဒေါ်လေး daw lay		Aunt	The youngest aunt may be called ထွေးလေး (dway lay).
First cousin	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	တူ tu		Nephew
Sibling's daughter	တူမ tuma		Niece

In-laws
Relation	Term	Form of address	English equivalent	Notes
Brother's wife (female ego) Husband's sister	ယောက်မ yaungma		sister-in-law
Elder brother's wife (male ego) Wife's elder sister	မရီး mayi		sister-in-law
Younger brother's wife (male ego) Wife's younger sister	ခယ်မ khema		sister-in-law
Sister's husband Husband's younger brother Wife's brother	ယောက်ဖ yaukpha		brother-in-law
Elder sister's husband (female ego) Husband's elder brother	ခဲအို khe-oh		brother-in-law
Younger sister's husband (female ego) Husband's younger brother	မတ် mat		brother-in-law
Son's wife	ချွေးမ chwayma		daughter-in-law
Daughter's husband	သမက် thamet		son-in-law
Spouse's father	ယောက္ခထီး yaukkahti		father-in-law
Spouse's mother	ယောက္ခမ yaukkhama		mother-in-law

References

1. မာလေး (1977). မြန်မာ့ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ (PDF) (in Burmese). စာပေဗိမာန်.
2. Burling, Robbins (October 1965). "Burmese Kinship Terminology". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 106–117. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00740. JSTOR 668758.
3. Tun, Than (1958). "Social life in Burma, AD 1044-1287" (PDF).
4. Sein Tu (September 1997). "Myanma Family Roles and Social Relationships". Myanmar Perspectives. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
5. Bradley, David (1989). "Uncles and Aunts: Burmese Kinship and Gender" (PDF). South-east Asian Linguisitics: Essays in Honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson: 147–162. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2013-10-19.
6. Myanmar-English Dictionary. Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. ISBN 978-1-881265-47-4.