Familial terms

Prerequisites for this Turkish Vocabulary Lesson

Everyone is a part of the family

One thing I love about Turkey is the culture of including everyone into part of the family. Strangers on the street call me “abi” (older brother) and I address others with similar familial terms. When addressing friends, acquaintances, and even strangers, the most common titles are terms for immediate family members: “abi” (older brother), “abla” (older sister) and “kardeş” (younger sibling). To address older women, the term “teyze” (maternal aunt) is often used. For older men, “amca” (paternal uncle) and “dayı” (maternal uncle) are both common terms. The terms for mother (“anne” or “ana”) and father (“baba”) can also be used for addressing older people, but this is less common.

What can make this difficult, however, is distinguishing between the times when people are talking about real family and when they are just talking about a friend. Not to mention all the different names for complicated family relations that we don’t have in English can be hard to keep straight. This article is here to help you with this. Below is a list of familial terms, what the standard meaning of the word is and when it can be applied to other people as well.

Immediate family

In the table below, you will see a list of the common words for the immediate family.

In addition to the basic terms, the term “üvey” can be added before an immediate family relation in order to indicate step relations. For example, the term for stepdad is “üvey baba.” This can also denote adoption without any blood relation.

In Turkish, people usually refer to their spouse using the generic term, “eş” (spouse) instead of the specific words, “koca” (husband) and “karı” (wife). Like many of the other familial terms, “eş” is almost always used with a possessive ending: “eşim” (my spouse).

Extended family

In Turkish, there are a lot of terms for specific members of the extended family. This system of kinship terms is called the “descriptive system” or the Sudanese kinship system. The Turkish language does not have a category for “aunts” or “uncles,” but instead specific terms for maternal aunt, paternal aunt, etc. Likewise, the category of “cousin” (“kuzen,” borrowed from English) is a relatively new development in the Turkish language. It is common for people to use the more specific cousin terms, such as “amca oğlu” (paternal uncle’s son), “hala kızı” (paternal aunt’s daughter), etc.

As with the immediate family terms, the extended family terms also get used as a friendly way of addressing people you aren’t related to. The most common of these are “amca” (father’s brother), “dayı” (mother’s brother) and “teyze” (mother’s sister). “Nine” (grandmother) and “dede” (grandfather) are also sometimes used, but most people prefer to use the aunt or uncle terms in order to avoid implying that someone is old. In fact, many people avoid even these terms and call old men and women simply “abi” (older brother) or “abla” (older sister) even if they are the age of their parents.

Extended family chart

Grandparents and Great Grandparents

Some Turkish speakers have different terms for their paternal grandfather (büyük baba) and maternal grandfather (dede), while others use these terms interchangeably. Dede is the more common term for grandfather.

Aunts and Uncles

Cousins

Other extended family terms

Family by marriage

Sister-in-law

Here are the different terms for sister-in-law in Turkish. Note that the term “yenge” (brother’s or uncle’s wife or fiancée) can also be used to refer to the wife or fiancée of any man. However, be careful how you use this term because it can easily be accidentally used to suggest that a relationship exists where one does not, which can be offensive.

Brother-in-law

Here are the different terms for brother-in-law in Turkish. Note that unlike with sisters-in-law, the brother of a person’s husband is not distinguished with a different term from the brother of a person’s wife.

Other in-laws

Chart with in-laws (for men)

Chart with in-laws (for women)

The ‑çığım ending for showing affection

Often, the ending ‑çığım/çiğim/çuğum/çüğüm or ‑cığım/ciğim/cuğum/cüğüm is added to a family term or a person’s name. This ending combines the diminutive ‑çık ending with the first person possession ending ‑ım. When someone uses a ‑çığım form, it makes the statement personal. People use it to show affection to the person they are talking to. It can be added to any family term, but the least common one of these is the kardeşçiğim term, perhaps because it doesn’t roll off the tongue. Also, ‑çığım be used when addressing strangers, especially when shop owners and bazaar workers are being polite to customers.

Test your knowledge of Turkish family terms

If all of these familial terms haven’t scattered your brains enough yet, see if you can pass the test by solving these 5 logic questions involving Turkish relational terms:

Akrabalık İlişkileriyle İlgili Beyninizi Yakacak 5 Mantık Sorusu