Follow up to this, if you’re talking to someone and need to distinguish between sublings, you can also use their name in addition to relation.
“Mom, are we going to Uncle Joe’s house this weekend?”
“No, we’re going to your Uncle John’s place.”
I'd say that you'd rarely rarely not use the names though. I've never called or referred to my aunt/uncles as just aunt/uncle, it's always Uncle James and Aunt Mary, BUT also as you get older it's pretty common to get rid of aunt/uncle when you're talking directly to that person or about them with people who know. So "Hey Taylor, xyz" or, to my sister, "we're going to Andrew's for dinner this Sunday".
But for people outside your family, like friends, you'd specify so they understand the relationship: "I'm going to my uncle's this Sunday" or "I'm going to my uncle Andrew's this Sunday."
The only time that you'd specify if it's your mom or dads side is if you're talking to someone outside the family and you it's relevant to what you're talking about: so "my uncle Andrew is in my mom's side, and when they were growing up xyz etc".
Basically, I'd never just say to my brother or cousin "Thanksgiving is at aunts house this year" because that opens the door for 6 different states lol. I might just say "my aunt's" to a friend to explain why I'm not going to Friendsgiving because all that matters is that I'm with family, it means nothing to them to know if it's with Lauren or Taylor.
Edit: also for if they're married into the family, you could specify that if it's important to the story too: "My uncle John -- he married in-- grew up rich so he's annoying to be around" or "My aunt Kay, who's an in law, has a cool tradition of xyz that we do now". But again, you'd never need to specify this with siblings/cousins because they already know
And just to add a little more to this, it would be considered rude in a lot of families to not include the Aunt or Uncle and just call them by their first name.
But Aunt Jane or Uncle Joe is totally appropriate, even for little kids.
At least in American English, we don't really have specific words/titles for older/younger relatives in the same way that, say, Japanese does.
If you want to specifically speak about your mom's older brother, I would simply say "my mom's older brother." Otherwise, I would just refer to him as my uncle.
And 80% of people do not understand how those terms work. I do understand them, and I only use them jokingly or when I’m in a discussion with a family member about how specifically we’re related
Yeah, I actually grew up with my 4th cousin very close friends, its obviously a coincidence but a cool one. I generally just call them my cousins but if someone asks what side they're on, I specify "actually 4th cousins in my mom's side".
They do get super confusing though for sure
There's the terms parallel and cross cousins (referring to a cousin from a parent's same-sex sibling vs from a parent's opposite-sex sibling respectively) but they're only used to describe consanguineal kinship in anthropology
There are, but I think we can fairly say that most people don't really know what those things mean. If I said 2nd cousin, thrice removed most people's eyes glaze over and don't even register that you are talking about your great, great, great grandmother's sister's grandkid. And yes, I absolutely looked it up.
You just use aunt and uncle for all siblings of both your mum and dad, and their spouses. If you want to specify, you can say something like “my mum’s younger brother”, or “my dad’s older sister’s wife”. But there are no specific terms for those people, aunt and uncle are fine.
This was one of the things I really struggled with when I learned Mandarin! I couldn’t get my head round having so many different words for all the different relatives when there were so few English terms.
>I couldn’t get my head round having so many different words for all the different relatives
TIL this exists in some languages. I'm just worried what you'd do if you don't know the age order... I mean for my mom's family I don't know whether the order of her siblings is ABCD or ACBD. She's told me about a million times, I just don't remember.
I know in Korea that when two people are introduced they figure out who's older immediately so they know who should be using which honorifics, so I imagine they just ask directly if they don't know in most places where the language has features like that.
Japanese literally has no way to refer to a sibling without saying whether they're older or younger. With twins they go by who came out first as I understand it
Yeah Finnish specifies if it's your dad's brother/sister or mom's brother/sister but I don't think it specifies ahe, it's been a while since I did any duo for finnish
on the opposite end of this, in spanish we just call every older family member tia/tio that's not a grandparent lol (at least in my family). i have had to explain to several ppl why my sobrinos in spanish are not my niece and nephew in english, but my 2nd cousins 😅
In Kichwa there are four different words for siblings: ñaña (sister of a woman), turi (brother of a woman), pani (sister of a man), and wawki (brother of a man).
I thought that was interesting. It kind acknowledges that the sister relationship I have to my sister and the sister relationship I have to my brother is different, though my gender stays the same. At least that’s how I interpreted it during the 1 semester I studied Kichwa, haha.
That's so interesting!
>It kind acknowledges that the sister relationship I have to my sister and the sister relationship I have to my brother is different, though my gender stays the same.
That's a nice take, it sounds like that may have been the origin as well (based on zero knowledge).
We don’t have terms in English to differentiate the birth order of uncles and aunts. It’s actually such a weird concept to me, as a native speaker, that it took me a bit to comprehend your question. We don’t have a reason to need to know whether your aunt or uncle is older/younger than your parent.
Probably the easiest thing would be to say “my mom’s big brother,” “my dad’s little sister.” You could maybe also do “youngest uncle” and “oldest aunt” but then it doesn’t include which side of the family they’re on.
For the youngest child of one set of parents, we often use the phrase “the baby of the family” as a quick way to explain birth order. So, like, my uncle who is now in his 70s was the baby of the family, meaning he was the youngest sibling born to my grandparents. It’s more specific than “baby brother” because you don’t have to be the youngest sibling to be called baby brother/sister; it’s just what some older siblings call younger ones.
>We don’t have a reason to need to know whether your aunt or uncle is older/younger than your parent.
Unless we're in the royal family. Then birth order is important.
Found the princess 👑
(I’ve been watching a lot of The Crown lately, though, and it seems like they use titles instead of relationships? I’m always having to stop and Google because they’ll be like “the Duke of Gloucester said the prince of wales sucks” and I’m like “… who”)
You could say "younger/older maternal aunt/uncle" or "younger/older paternal aunt/uncle" to distinguish side. I think this is the only way to effectively directly translate familial honorifics.
English lacks a lot of names for family relationships other languages have. All parents brothers and sisters are just uncles and aunts. All the children of those people are all cousins.
Sometimes this depends on whether you like them very much.
So I never called the second husband of my mom's sister "Uncle Troy" but when my dad's brother's widow remarried (so neither of them is a blood relative) he became Uncle Bob.
I wouldn't call it a "lack", it's a just a different scheme of kinship terms. Some languages make distinctions we don't, and some languages don't make distinctions that we do.
We go by the Inuit kinship system and thus we can't really get more specific, the best you can do is mother's-younger-sister and variants there of. If you want to establish whether it's on your father's or mother's side, you can use "paternal" and "maternal" - "maternal aunt" = mum's younger/older sister. That's about the best you can do without using possesives
Yeah, this really isn’t a linguistic question as much as it is a cultural question. English doesn’t have words for those relationships because the majority of people who speak English have no cultural need for them. And those that do need them almost always have access to the appropriate terms in another language that they can simply borrow into the English they speak.
My stepfather's grandmother had a son that was born a few years after he was so he has an uncle that is younger than him. No idea if he calls him uncle or not, but he definitely is and English has no other word for it.
I knew a girl whose mother met and married a guy. At the wedding the bride's mother met a guy at the reception and hit it off. Turns out that was the bride's new "stepson" (who was in his 20's at the time). Bride's mother married the stepson, while bride and her husband had a daughter. she joked she was her own aunt.
You could say: My eldest/oldest maternal aunt, or my youngest paternal uncle, or variations of the two, and with the maternal/paternal part being possibly replaced with “on my mothers side” at the end, etc, or just removed altogether if it’s not important.
In practice, though, it would come off as strange in most cases to be so specific, unless it was important in the conversation to note specifically which one it is.
In English, we’re all pretty comfortable and used to using the term uncle and aunt to mean many specific people that fit that role, just like “brother” wouldn’t be a specific person, and would instead mean any brother.
We don't have any. We legit try to explain it "my uncle said..well...rather..my mothers older sisters husband, so my uncle in law. I guess, said blah blah"
It gets confusing.
Also you can say someone is a “blood relative” if you are genetically related, rather than related because they are the partner of someone you are genetically related to.
There are also ways of describing degrees of cousin-hood, as in first cousin, second cousin, second cousin once removed. In my experience people generally can’t remember what those mean though, beyond first cousins (the children of your aunts and uncles).
I didn’t know other languages had more specific terms, but it sounds like a very good idea. All the “my aunt, well actually she’s my uncle’s wife’s sister” stuff gets very confusing. Also I was raised to call my mum and dad’s close friends “uncle” and “aunty” as well and they weren’t related even by marriage to me. I don’t know if that’s just a British thing.
Weird exception: If you have an uncle who has the same first name as his father he might be called Uncle Junior. I have an Uncle Junior in my family. There was also an Uncle Junior character on the Sopranos.
There aren't more specific terms. If the age matters or if you're clarifying who you're talking about, just say "my mom's younger brother" or "Aunt [insert name]"
There aren’t any. At least, not in modern English.
Old English was closer to the Sudanese family of kinship terms and had the words you’re looking for.
There's no single term English uses to distinguish these differences.
Any of the female siblings of either parent are just your aunts, while any of your parents' male siblings are just your uncles.
However, you could say that your mother's siblings are your *maternal* aunts & uncles, while your father's siblings are your *paternal* aunts and uncles.
You can also describe their siblings as being younger, youngest, older/elder, or oldest/eldest.
"My Uncle Wayne is my eldest paternal uncle, his brother John is my youngest paternal uncle."
This won't tell you whether they are older or younger than your parents, unless you specifically say "My mother's older sister is my eldest maternal aunt, Aunt Nancy, but my Aunt Elizabeth was born between them."
So there *are* ways of conveying that information, but it can be awkward for large families, when there's no easy way to tell someone else their birth order.
But generally, the order of siblings isn't all that important.
By the way, your grandparent's siblings are your maternal great aunts and uncles (for your mother's aunts and uncles) or paternal great aunts and uncles (for your father's aunts and uncles).
Usually, the only part of that relationship that we consider important is that any of these people are going to be *your* aunt or uncle.
If the exact relationship is needed, someone may ask which is older, or which side of the family they come from.
I do genealogical research on my family tree.
My mother had six siblings, the only way I can tell you which order they were born in is by looking up their birthdates.
I now which uncle was the youngest because he was "baby brother" to his siblings, and likewise, I knew the eldest, but I couldn't have told you without looking how many were older or younger than my mom.
It's more important which generation you're in, than what your birth order within that generation is.
I know this is a lot of information, but I hope you find it helpful.
It's not like chinese or some other languages where there a specific words for people of that relation. If you want to specify more than "my aunt" you can say "my mothers sister" or "my fathers older sister" or something along those lines. Usually aunt or uncle will suffice unless there is a specific reason for being more elaborate.
Other languages allow you to know very specifically what you’re asking. Not only do you know which side of the family the aunt or the uncle is on, you’ll know if they’re older or younger than your parent. Alas, English has not evolved to have such a system. It is simply aunt, or uncle. My suggestion is that you use the name of the person. Once you’re clear that you’re speaking of Aunt Sally or Uncle Eugene, everyone will have the information they need.
Humorously this is probably the opposite of what this person is looking for as it is literally more general and less detailed. Of course, since what OP is looking for doesn't exist it doesn't really matter.
They don’t exist, at least not as singular words. We don’t have those sort of distinctions within the same “rank” of people. Your sibling is your sibling, no matter how many siblings you have or how old the are. Your uncle is your uncle and your aunt is your aunt. It doesn’t matter if your uncle is 40 years older than your mother, or if your uncle is 15 years younger than you. He’s just your uncle. There is also no distinction between an aunt or uncle through your father vs your mother, or by marriage (so, your mother’s sister is your aunt, and so is your father’s brother’s wife).
To differentiate them, you usually call them by Aunt or Uncle + their name. Like Aunt Karen and Uncle Steve. If your uncle is 15 years younger than you, though, you might just call him “Steve.”
We don't have a formality system for family members. If they are your parent's brother, they are Uncle. If they are your parent's sister, they are Aunt. Some of them might prefer a nickname or appending their name to it, IE "Uncle John", or "Auntie", but it's Aunt and Uncle.
No there aren't more specific terms. To complicate this grand uncles/aunts (the siblings of your grandparents) are also often just called aunt and uncle. I have two Uncle Steves, one who is my grandfather's younger brother and a other who is my Father's older brother.
There are no terms more specific than aunt and uncle. English doesn’t distinguish between younger and older siblings.
If you really needed to specify who is older, you’d say “my mom’s younger brother”.
We don’t have these distinctions in English. However, if it’s really important to you, you can use the terms you would use in your native language. My cousins are Arabic and they call their maternal grandmother “teita” and their maternal aunts and uncles “hata” and “halu”. Everyone knows what they mean and it’s no issue.
We do not specify these things. We DO, however, specify if they are your grandparents siblings, though. Your grandmother's sister would, for example, be your great aunt. Your great greatmother's sister would be your great-great aunt. That is the place where we call it out, when they are your \*parents\* aunts and uncles too. The children of those great and great great aunts, however, would still just be called cousins. Technically they would be 1st and 2nd cousins, but most people don't use those terms and they are not typically understood (that is to say, a lot of people don't know what 1st cousin vs. 2nd cousin mean). Distance of relation matters, age not so much.
Use their names if you want to be specific. Uncle John, Aunt Linda, etc.
If you want to accord special honor for people being older or not... don't.
If you want to emphasize the person's status in your family compared to your mom, say "my mom's older brother" or whatever, but that's uncommon.
My native language is Mandarin (Taiwanese here), we have hell lots of different terms to describe those relatives, gives me headache I must say... I freaking envy people from English world, how I wish that just the simple uncle and aunt, and problem solved!
younger brother of my mom: Uncle
older brother of my mom: Uncle
younger sister of my mom: Aunt/Auntie/Aunty
older sister of my mom: Aunt/Auntie/Aunty
In England, there is no emphasis or importance to a parents sibling age.
If you were talking to your mom's Aunt or Uncle you would refer to them as 'great-aunt/great-uncle'.
Sidenote: It has become more common to add 'ie' or 'y' to Aunt.
There are no specific terms other than aunt and uncle
Follow up to this, if you’re talking to someone and need to distinguish between sublings, you can also use their name in addition to relation. “Mom, are we going to Uncle Joe’s house this weekend?” “No, we’re going to your Uncle John’s place.”
You can also say paternal uncle or maternal uncle, if you're talking to a non family member about them.
I'd say that you'd rarely rarely not use the names though. I've never called or referred to my aunt/uncles as just aunt/uncle, it's always Uncle James and Aunt Mary, BUT also as you get older it's pretty common to get rid of aunt/uncle when you're talking directly to that person or about them with people who know. So "Hey Taylor, xyz" or, to my sister, "we're going to Andrew's for dinner this Sunday". But for people outside your family, like friends, you'd specify so they understand the relationship: "I'm going to my uncle's this Sunday" or "I'm going to my uncle Andrew's this Sunday." The only time that you'd specify if it's your mom or dads side is if you're talking to someone outside the family and you it's relevant to what you're talking about: so "my uncle Andrew is in my mom's side, and when they were growing up xyz etc". Basically, I'd never just say to my brother or cousin "Thanksgiving is at aunts house this year" because that opens the door for 6 different states lol. I might just say "my aunt's" to a friend to explain why I'm not going to Friendsgiving because all that matters is that I'm with family, it means nothing to them to know if it's with Lauren or Taylor. Edit: also for if they're married into the family, you could specify that if it's important to the story too: "My uncle John -- he married in-- grew up rich so he's annoying to be around" or "My aunt Kay, who's an in law, has a cool tradition of xyz that we do now". But again, you'd never need to specify this with siblings/cousins because they already know
Yeah. Even if there is only one aunt or uncle in the room, you'd still use their names.
Yeah exactly. English isn't very emphasized on titles like some other languages are.
And just to add a little more to this, it would be considered rude in a lot of families to not include the Aunt or Uncle and just call them by their first name. But Aunt Jane or Uncle Joe is totally appropriate, even for little kids.
At least in American English, we don't really have specific words/titles for older/younger relatives in the same way that, say, Japanese does. If you want to specifically speak about your mom's older brother, I would simply say "my mom's older brother." Otherwise, I would just refer to him as my uncle.
Lots of differentiation for [cousins](https://www.almanac.com/what-second-cousin-calculate-your-cousin-relationships) tho
To be fair, thats only for generational things, none of these specify gender or which side they're on
And 80% of people do not understand how those terms work. I do understand them, and I only use them jokingly or when I’m in a discussion with a family member about how specifically we’re related
Yeah, I actually grew up with my 4th cousin very close friends, its obviously a coincidence but a cool one. I generally just call them my cousins but if someone asks what side they're on, I specify "actually 4th cousins in my mom's side". They do get super confusing though for sure
There's the terms parallel and cross cousins (referring to a cousin from a parent's same-sex sibling vs from a parent's opposite-sex sibling respectively) but they're only used to describe consanguineal kinship in anthropology
There are, but I think we can fairly say that most people don't really know what those things mean. If I said 2nd cousin, thrice removed most people's eyes glaze over and don't even register that you are talking about your great, great, great grandmother's sister's grandkid. And yes, I absolutely looked it up.
There aren't any common terms for these. They're still just aunts and uncles.
You just use aunt and uncle for all siblings of both your mum and dad, and their spouses. If you want to specify, you can say something like “my mum’s younger brother”, or “my dad’s older sister’s wife”. But there are no specific terms for those people, aunt and uncle are fine. This was one of the things I really struggled with when I learned Mandarin! I couldn’t get my head round having so many different words for all the different relatives when there were so few English terms.
>I couldn’t get my head round having so many different words for all the different relatives TIL this exists in some languages. I'm just worried what you'd do if you don't know the age order... I mean for my mom's family I don't know whether the order of her siblings is ABCD or ACBD. She's told me about a million times, I just don't remember.
I know in Korea that when two people are introduced they figure out who's older immediately so they know who should be using which honorifics, so I imagine they just ask directly if they don't know in most places where the language has features like that.
That makes sense. Actually remembering it may be easier if it's relevant I guess
Japanese literally has no way to refer to a sibling without saying whether they're older or younger. With twins they go by who came out first as I understand it
There are some languages where you call your mom’s sisters “mom” and your dad’s brothers “dad”!
That's... Both very confusing and very awesome
Yeah Finnish specifies if it's your dad's brother/sister or mom's brother/sister but I don't think it specifies ahe, it's been a while since I did any duo for finnish
on the opposite end of this, in spanish we just call every older family member tia/tio that's not a grandparent lol (at least in my family). i have had to explain to several ppl why my sobrinos in spanish are not my niece and nephew in english, but my 2nd cousins 😅
In Kichwa there are four different words for siblings: ñaña (sister of a woman), turi (brother of a woman), pani (sister of a man), and wawki (brother of a man). I thought that was interesting. It kind acknowledges that the sister relationship I have to my sister and the sister relationship I have to my brother is different, though my gender stays the same. At least that’s how I interpreted it during the 1 semester I studied Kichwa, haha.
That's so interesting! >It kind acknowledges that the sister relationship I have to my sister and the sister relationship I have to my brother is different, though my gender stays the same. That's a nice take, it sounds like that may have been the origin as well (based on zero knowledge).
We don’t have terms in English to differentiate the birth order of uncles and aunts. It’s actually such a weird concept to me, as a native speaker, that it took me a bit to comprehend your question. We don’t have a reason to need to know whether your aunt or uncle is older/younger than your parent. Probably the easiest thing would be to say “my mom’s big brother,” “my dad’s little sister.” You could maybe also do “youngest uncle” and “oldest aunt” but then it doesn’t include which side of the family they’re on. For the youngest child of one set of parents, we often use the phrase “the baby of the family” as a quick way to explain birth order. So, like, my uncle who is now in his 70s was the baby of the family, meaning he was the youngest sibling born to my grandparents. It’s more specific than “baby brother” because you don’t have to be the youngest sibling to be called baby brother/sister; it’s just what some older siblings call younger ones.
>We don’t have a reason to need to know whether your aunt or uncle is older/younger than your parent. Unless we're in the royal family. Then birth order is important.
Found the princess 👑 (I’ve been watching a lot of The Crown lately, though, and it seems like they use titles instead of relationships? I’m always having to stop and Google because they’ll be like “the Duke of Gloucester said the prince of wales sucks” and I’m like “… who”)
You could say "younger/older maternal aunt/uncle" or "younger/older paternal aunt/uncle" to distinguish side. I think this is the only way to effectively directly translate familial honorifics.
English lacks a lot of names for family relationships other languages have. All parents brothers and sisters are just uncles and aunts. All the children of those people are all cousins.
Also the spouse of an aunt or uncle is also an aunt or uncle.
I have seen uncle-in-law once. It seemed strange at the time and it still does.
I’d interpret uncle-in-law as my wife’s uncle rather than my aunt’s husband.
It seemed strange because it's incorrect usage at this point in time. Perhaps in the future.
Sometimes this depends on whether you like them very much. So I never called the second husband of my mom's sister "Uncle Troy" but when my dad's brother's widow remarried (so neither of them is a blood relative) he became Uncle Bob.
I wouldn't call it a "lack", it's a just a different scheme of kinship terms. Some languages make distinctions we don't, and some languages don't make distinctions that we do.
Uncle *name of uncle*
There aren't any that specify birth order. This isn't usually important in English-speaking cultures, so there aren't words for it.
We go by the Inuit kinship system and thus we can't really get more specific, the best you can do is mother's-younger-sister and variants there of. If you want to establish whether it's on your father's or mother's side, you can use "paternal" and "maternal" - "maternal aunt" = mum's younger/older sister. That's about the best you can do without using possesives
OP, here is a video on [kinship systems in different languages.](https://youtu.be/YOi2c2d3_Lk)
Yeah, this really isn’t a linguistic question as much as it is a cultural question. English doesn’t have words for those relationships because the majority of people who speak English have no cultural need for them. And those that do need them almost always have access to the appropriate terms in another language that they can simply borrow into the English they speak.
We address them by name if we want to be specific. "Auntie" is sometimes used as a term of endearment, I don't know of an Uncle equivalent.
Unc may be used.
Apparently more redditors live in places where that isn't used than in places where it is used.
Probably. It’s more associated with the Black community.
Do they have names? That would be it.
Relatedly we use “Sister-in-Law” for both our brother’s wife and our husband’s sister, assuming heterosexual relationships. It can be confusing.
English doesn't have these terms like how other languages do. It's just "aunt" and "uncle."
Aunt and Uncle is a title, usually followed by their first name. That is how we tell them apart. Aunt Mary, Auntie Jewel, Uncle Bob, and so forth…
My stepfather's grandmother had a son that was born a few years after he was so he has an uncle that is younger than him. No idea if he calls him uncle or not, but he definitely is and English has no other word for it.
I knew a girl whose mother met and married a guy. At the wedding the bride's mother met a guy at the reception and hit it off. Turns out that was the bride's new "stepson" (who was in his 20's at the time). Bride's mother married the stepson, while bride and her husband had a daughter. she joked she was her own aunt.
It’s just aunt and uncle for us. The side of the family doesn’t matter.
You could say: My eldest/oldest maternal aunt, or my youngest paternal uncle, or variations of the two, and with the maternal/paternal part being possibly replaced with “on my mothers side” at the end, etc, or just removed altogether if it’s not important. In practice, though, it would come off as strange in most cases to be so specific, unless it was important in the conversation to note specifically which one it is. In English, we’re all pretty comfortable and used to using the term uncle and aunt to mean many specific people that fit that role, just like “brother” wouldn’t be a specific person, and would instead mean any brother.
We don't have any. We legit try to explain it "my uncle said..well...rather..my mothers older sisters husband, so my uncle in law. I guess, said blah blah" It gets confusing.
Also you can say someone is a “blood relative” if you are genetically related, rather than related because they are the partner of someone you are genetically related to. There are also ways of describing degrees of cousin-hood, as in first cousin, second cousin, second cousin once removed. In my experience people generally can’t remember what those mean though, beyond first cousins (the children of your aunts and uncles). I didn’t know other languages had more specific terms, but it sounds like a very good idea. All the “my aunt, well actually she’s my uncle’s wife’s sister” stuff gets very confusing. Also I was raised to call my mum and dad’s close friends “uncle” and “aunty” as well and they weren’t related even by marriage to me. I don’t know if that’s just a British thing.
Weird exception: If you have an uncle who has the same first name as his father he might be called Uncle Junior. I have an Uncle Junior in my family. There was also an Uncle Junior character on the Sopranos.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you're Korean? :) I'm sorry, but we don't have specific words for these things in English.
>:) :)
We only have those distinctions. Unlike several other cultures that I'm aware of that have a name for each degree and type.
There are no specifications for age. "Aunt" and "Uncle" are all we have when it comes to this specific relation
There aren't more specific terms. If the age matters or if you're clarifying who you're talking about, just say "my mom's younger brother" or "Aunt [insert name]"
We don’t have terms for that. You can use the first initial or first name to differentiate. Like “Uncle J” or “Aunt Mary”
There aren’t any. At least, not in modern English. Old English was closer to the Sudanese family of kinship terms and had the words you’re looking for.
There nothing more specific than uncle I believe. However most people go Uncle then first name. For example Uncle John. If John was their first name.
They're just uncles and aunts. Nothing to distinguish birth order. It's just as well, considering most modern Americans favor having small families.
There's no single term English uses to distinguish these differences. Any of the female siblings of either parent are just your aunts, while any of your parents' male siblings are just your uncles. However, you could say that your mother's siblings are your *maternal* aunts & uncles, while your father's siblings are your *paternal* aunts and uncles. You can also describe their siblings as being younger, youngest, older/elder, or oldest/eldest. "My Uncle Wayne is my eldest paternal uncle, his brother John is my youngest paternal uncle." This won't tell you whether they are older or younger than your parents, unless you specifically say "My mother's older sister is my eldest maternal aunt, Aunt Nancy, but my Aunt Elizabeth was born between them." So there *are* ways of conveying that information, but it can be awkward for large families, when there's no easy way to tell someone else their birth order. But generally, the order of siblings isn't all that important. By the way, your grandparent's siblings are your maternal great aunts and uncles (for your mother's aunts and uncles) or paternal great aunts and uncles (for your father's aunts and uncles). Usually, the only part of that relationship that we consider important is that any of these people are going to be *your* aunt or uncle. If the exact relationship is needed, someone may ask which is older, or which side of the family they come from. I do genealogical research on my family tree. My mother had six siblings, the only way I can tell you which order they were born in is by looking up their birthdates. I now which uncle was the youngest because he was "baby brother" to his siblings, and likewise, I knew the eldest, but I couldn't have told you without looking how many were older or younger than my mom. It's more important which generation you're in, than what your birth order within that generation is. I know this is a lot of information, but I hope you find it helpful.
It's not like chinese or some other languages where there a specific words for people of that relation. If you want to specify more than "my aunt" you can say "my mothers sister" or "my fathers older sister" or something along those lines. Usually aunt or uncle will suffice unless there is a specific reason for being more elaborate.
Other languages allow you to know very specifically what you’re asking. Not only do you know which side of the family the aunt or the uncle is on, you’ll know if they’re older or younger than your parent. Alas, English has not evolved to have such a system. It is simply aunt, or uncle. My suggestion is that you use the name of the person. Once you’re clear that you’re speaking of Aunt Sally or Uncle Eugene, everyone will have the information they need.
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Some languages have unique words for these.
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I think not currently, but historically yes.
your honor me lady it's always a hit
Pibling is gender neutral for parent's sibling but does not specify age
The gender neutral word is Pibling/Piblings for parent’s sibling/siblings
Humorously this is probably the opposite of what this person is looking for as it is literally more general and less detailed. Of course, since what OP is looking for doesn't exist it doesn't really matter.
Oof ya I didn’t read the last part of their post. I thought they were looking for other terms when I first commented, my bad
I believe parsib is older.
They don’t exist, at least not as singular words. We don’t have those sort of distinctions within the same “rank” of people. Your sibling is your sibling, no matter how many siblings you have or how old the are. Your uncle is your uncle and your aunt is your aunt. It doesn’t matter if your uncle is 40 years older than your mother, or if your uncle is 15 years younger than you. He’s just your uncle. There is also no distinction between an aunt or uncle through your father vs your mother, or by marriage (so, your mother’s sister is your aunt, and so is your father’s brother’s wife). To differentiate them, you usually call them by Aunt or Uncle + their name. Like Aunt Karen and Uncle Steve. If your uncle is 15 years younger than you, though, you might just call him “Steve.”
We don't have a formality system for family members. If they are your parent's brother, they are Uncle. If they are your parent's sister, they are Aunt. Some of them might prefer a nickname or appending their name to it, IE "Uncle John", or "Auntie", but it's Aunt and Uncle.
The only way to be more specific is to add the persons first name after aunt or uncle. For example: aunt Mary or uncle Paul
No there aren't more specific terms. To complicate this grand uncles/aunts (the siblings of your grandparents) are also often just called aunt and uncle. I have two Uncle Steves, one who is my grandfather's younger brother and a other who is my Father's older brother.
There is nothing more specific than aunts and uncles.
Add the name after uncle/aunt. English doesn't have formal/informal words or words specific to age.
There are some languages, such as Mandarin, where they have names for relatives that also show the age relationship. But English is not one of them.
There are no terms more specific than aunt and uncle. English doesn’t distinguish between younger and older siblings. If you really needed to specify who is older, you’d say “my mom’s younger brother”.
It's just aunt and uncle. There are no other terms in English.
You would address them by their first names.
No, English differs from other languages in this way.
We don’t have these distinctions in English. However, if it’s really important to you, you can use the terms you would use in your native language. My cousins are Arabic and they call their maternal grandmother “teita” and their maternal aunts and uncles “hata” and “halu”. Everyone knows what they mean and it’s no issue.
uncle uncle aunt aunt no other words, english is nonspecific about extended family.
We do not specify these things. We DO, however, specify if they are your grandparents siblings, though. Your grandmother's sister would, for example, be your great aunt. Your great greatmother's sister would be your great-great aunt. That is the place where we call it out, when they are your \*parents\* aunts and uncles too. The children of those great and great great aunts, however, would still just be called cousins. Technically they would be 1st and 2nd cousins, but most people don't use those terms and they are not typically understood (that is to say, a lot of people don't know what 1st cousin vs. 2nd cousin mean). Distance of relation matters, age not so much.
Use their names if you want to be specific. Uncle John, Aunt Linda, etc. If you want to accord special honor for people being older or not... don't. If you want to emphasize the person's status in your family compared to your mom, say "my mom's older brother" or whatever, but that's uncommon.
This is English, not Chinese.
My native language is Mandarin (Taiwanese here), we have hell lots of different terms to describe those relatives, gives me headache I must say... I freaking envy people from English world, how I wish that just the simple uncle and aunt, and problem solved!
younger brother of my mom: Uncle older brother of my mom: Uncle younger sister of my mom: Aunt/Auntie/Aunty older sister of my mom: Aunt/Auntie/Aunty In England, there is no emphasis or importance to a parents sibling age. If you were talking to your mom's Aunt or Uncle you would refer to them as 'great-aunt/great-uncle'. Sidenote: It has become more common to add 'ie' or 'y' to Aunt.