Loading AI tools
In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of an individual's sibling or sibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblings aunt or uncle. The gender-neutral term nibling has been used in place of the common terms, especially in specialist literature.[1]
Look up niece in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up nephew in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
As aunt/uncle and niece/nephew are separated by one generation, they are an example of a second-degree relationship. Unless related by marriage, they are 25% or more related by blood if the aunt/uncle is a full sibling of one of the parents, or 12.5% if they are a half-sibling.
The word nephew is derived from the French word neveu which is derived from the Latin nepos.[2] The term nepotism, meaning familial loyalty, is derived from this Latin term.[3] Niece entered Middle English from the Old French word nece, which also derives from Latin nepotem.[4] The word nibling, derived from sibling, is a neologism suggested by Samuel Martin in 1951 as a cover term for "nephew or niece"; it is not common outside of specialist literature.[1] Sometimes in discussions involving analytic material or in abstract literature, terms such as male nibling and female nibling are preferred to describe nephews and nieces respectively.[5] Terms such as nibling are also sometimes viewed as a gender-neutral alternative to terms which may be viewed as perpetuating the overgenderization of the English language;[6] it can also be used likewise to refer to non-binary relatives.[7]
These French-derived terms displaced the Middle English nyfte, nift, nifte, from Old English nift, from Proto-Germanic *niftiz ('niece'); and the Middle English neve, neave, from Old English nefa, from Proto-Germanic *nefô ('nephew').[8][9][10][11]
 | This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. (September 2016) |
Traditionally, a nephew was the logical recipient of his uncle's inheritance if the latter did not have a successor. A nephew might have more rights of inheritance than the uncle's daughter.[12][13]
In social environments that lacked a stable home or environments such as refugee situations, uncles and fathers would equally be assigned responsibility for their sons and nephews.[14]
Among parents, some cultures have assigned equal status in their social status to daughters and nieces. This is, for instance, the case in Indian communities in Mauritius,[15] and the Thai Nakhon Phanom Province, where the transfer of cultural knowledge such as weaving was distributed equally among daughters, nieces and nieces-in-law by the Tai So community,[16] and some Garifuna people that would transmit languages to their nieces.[17] In some proselytizing communities the term niece was informally extended to include non-related younger female community members as a form of endearment.[18] Among some tribes in Manus Province of Papua New Guinea, women's roles as sisters, daughters and nieces may have taken precedence over their marital status in social importance.[19]
- A grandnephew or grandniece is the grandson or granddaughter of one's sibling.[20] Also called great-nephew / great-niece.[21]
- A half-niece or half-nephew is the child of one's half-sibling, related by 12.5%.[22][23]
In some cultures and family traditions, it is common to refer to cousins with one or more removals to a newer generation using some form of the word niece or nephew. For more information see cousin.
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
