Kinship terms in English

We've been thinking about a relative of mine who’s been having health issues lately. His relationship to me is “father-in-law of my sister-in-law,” which strikes me as having potentially three different ways of being interpreted:

He could be my brother's wife's husband’s father, which would make him my own father.
He could be my wife’s sister's husband's father.
He could be my wife’s brother's wife’s husband's father, making him also my own father-in-law.

(Not sure about that last one, actually.)

But if I wanted to disambiguate it down to the one actual situation, I could tell you either (1) that neither I nor my wife have brothers, or (2) his relation to me cannot be simplified further from “father-in-law of my sister-in-law.” Either way, it all miraculously reduces down to one possibility.

I know that other languages do a better job of making these precise distinctions.

Originally published: 2003/05/27 05:31:53

Frabjous Times

Kinship terms in English