Family/Kinship words (continued)

Representing kinship relations

Talking about these relations can result in long strings of words: mother’s father’s  sister’s daughter’s daughter…..  So the AUSTKIN database uses a system of a shortcuts or abbreviations.  These are usually based on the first letter of the relationship term. 

Father	F
Mother	M
Son	S
Daughter	D
Brother	B
Sister	Z
Husband	H
Wife	W

An exception is the case where two terms start with the same letter. Then we use S for ‘son’ but Z for ‘sister’.

So your mother’s father’s sister’s daughter’s daughter is your MFZDD. 
Another way of representing relationships is through a kinship tree. Below is the type of tree used in the AustKin database.





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