What is the "family term" for . . .?

Question:. . . nieces and nephews? Brothers and sisters are grouped together as "siblings", but are nieces and nephews called anything?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: . . . nieces and nephews? Brothers and sisters are grouped together as "siblings", but are nieces and nephews called anything?

Based on our kinship system, you have at the "0th Cousin" level terms that are sex specific as well as terms that are sex independent.

Brother/Sister is sex specific but siblings is sex independent.
Son/Daughter is sex specific but children is sex independent.

Going purely sex independent at the "nieces and nephews" relationship (and beyond) is a bit combersome - they are your sibling's children". But of course nieces/nephews of the same parents are siblings.

Our kinship system uses this classification at the "0th cousin" level - yes, there is a "0th cousin" though that term is NEVER used because we have other more descriptive terms. You and your brother or sister are actually 0th cousins.

In good genealogy reports, the use of the sex specific or sex independent terms tell a lot. You may know that someone has 3 children, but don't know what their sex is (either because you don't have a name, or the name is sexually ambiguous). Saying someone has sons and daughters "implies" some of each. Saying 3 children makes no statement as to the sex of the children. Same with brothers/sisters - Saying someone has 3 brothers and sisters implies some of each, saying someone has 3 siblings doesn't imply anything about sex.

But as I started, this is for OUR kinship system. There are many different systems throughout the world and you need to be aware of this at times when doing research.

For example, in the Sudanese kinship system, no two relatives share the same term!

Some systems, especially Native American, distinguish between a mother and father's side in their kinship terminology.

Our kinship system has a number of ambiguities. For example, we have no way to distinguish a relationship on the mother's side from the father's side (except by the brute force method of putting "maternal" or "paternal" in front of the relationship term). A fully descriptive kinship system would use a term like uncleo for a father's brother and unclea for a mother's brother.

Also while our "cousin" is a generational term, and without removed is rather clear (both people have the same number of generations separating them from the common ancestor), once we get to "removed", there is ambiguity. If two people are 1st cousins twice removed", while an accurate relationship, there is no way to tell which of the two people is 1 generation removed from the common ancestor and which is 3 generations removed.

maybe extended family????

Branch has also been used to describe relatives like nieces and nephews. Such as these children are my Brothers branch of the Family Tree.

Relatives, plain and simple.

If they're nieces and nephews to people of the same generation, then I would presume they're all cousins (if they're not siblings). My sister and I are the nieces of my aunt; my aunt's sons are the nephews of my mother, and we are all each other's cousins.

Their called "annoying".

No. When they were younger I used the word "Scurries" for mine, because they were always scurrying about, up to mischief, but it never caught on.