Sudanese Kinship Terminology

Sudanese kinship terminology, also called the descriptive or bifurcate-collateral system, is the most elaborate of the six major kinship-terminology systems Lewis Henry Morgan classified in 1871. It gives a distinct term to nearly every category of relative, differentiating kin by side, maternal versus paternal, by generation, by gender, and often by relative age: a father is terminologically distinguished from his brother and from the mother's brother, and cross-cousins, children of opposite-sex siblings, are named separately from parallel-cousins, children of same-sex siblings. Its detailed classifications carry social weight, defining specific expectations of behavior, support, and obligation for each named category of kin. The system is named for South Sudan and is also documented in ancient Latin and Anglo-Saxon kin terms, in modern Arabic, Turkish, and Chinese usage, in Swedish and other Germanic languages, among Balkan peoples, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosniak, Croatian, Macedonian, and in Finnish.