Greek Kinship Terminology

Classical Greek kinship terminology, as it is used for example by Isaios, offers few difficulties of meaning in its terms, and describes a bilateral family rather like our own. The principal usages mav be shown in genealogical form as follows:The noteworthy terms are: (i) kedestes, (2) anepsios, anepsiadous, exanepsios, and (3) adelphos and adelphe. Kedestes is applicable to any male who is a close relative by marriage, but who does not belong to the circle of heirs within the anchisteia: the term thus covers our father-in-law, stepfather, brother-in-law, and son-in-law. The close association of the term with words for ‘mourning’ suggests that this name arose from the duties performed in the funerals of members of their wives' anchisteia, even though they were outside the circle of heirs. The terms pentheros and gambros are, apparently, influenced by the usage of kedestes, and tend to the same classificatory employment. The meaning of nyos similarly tends to wander. Anepsios varies between cousin-german and nephew, and each of these relationships also has its exact term, in both cases a compound of adelphos. Anepsiadous and its synonym anepsiou pais are used not only for the cousin's child (the first cousin once removed), but also for Ego's parent's cousin (also a first cousin once removed): so Theopompos, the mother's cousin and heir of Hagnias, calls himself anepsiou pais to Hagnias. The exanepsios was outside the Attic anchisteia, and the term is rarely found. The terms for blood relatives are of the common IE vocabulary except adelphos and adelphe, which have replaced phrater (surviving to mean ‘member of a phratry’), and the lexicographers' eor.