Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 203
family and there were ritual links between houses of close or more distant relations who were
often living nearby. In Chapters 3.11 and 3.12 about the architecture of a traditional Dghweɗe
house we will contextualise how these inherited social links were ritually re-enacted in
family-orientated religious observances in the home.
The comprehensive list of relationship terms concerning the family presented below was
originally made with the help of bulama Mbaldawa and elders in Tatsa in 1995, but it was
reviewed in 1996 and reinterpreted with the help of John Zakariya. The list is far from
complete but it gives a good insight into how the Dghweɗe family terms were compiled. We
sometimes use the second person to describe the ego-centred relationship terms listed, since
this was how John described them to me:
• We start off with the husband of a patrilocal nuclear family who refers to his wife as
nise, but he can also refer to his wife's sisters as nise, as well as to his younger brothers'
wives. A wife refers to her husband as zala, and his wives’ sisters also call him zala.
Someone's wives refer to each other as tatghe.
• You refer to your father as dada but you can also refer to any older male as dada. The
term dada is also used to refer to someone's deceased father represented by a stone
erected at the foot of his house shrine (thala). A senior brother responsible for the
sacrifice of his junior brother's ancestor stone is also referred to as dada. Even a
generation mate (skmama) of a deceased grandfather or great-grandfather and who
carries out rituals on behalf of the father of a house at the ancestor stones can be referred
to as dada.
• You refer to your mother and to the sisters of your mother as baya. So do your halfsiblings, but they sometimes also refer to their siblings' mothers as yaya, which is a
general term for a person slightly older than oneself regardless of gender. The prefix ba
in baya signifies the reference to a female. You can refer to any woman's daughter from
your mother's kin as dugh baya and to any woman's son from your mother's kin as ske
baya, in both cases regardless of their age. There is also a general term to cover both
which is vjirbaya.
• The father of a house is often referred to as zal thaghaya, meaning husband or head of
the family home (gwalghaya). We have already mentioned the term thaghaya for the
seventh born, and learned that the term is also used to represent a thaghaya lineage, and
we have said that later we will learn more about their various ritual functions. In this
section we only want to point out that the word zal thaghaya refers to the head of a
farmstead, and even if he is not a seventh born himself he can potentially become the
father of one. As we know, the seventh-born son of a first wife inherits not only the
house and most of the land, but also the right to be served first by the generation mates of
a deceased ancestor, as ritual custodian over three generations of extended family
ancestors.
• The general term for brother is sknukwe but its use is often connected to the thought
of one with whom he cannot intermarry in the context of one's own gwagha, meaning the
'brotherhood' of belonging to the same exogamous lineage. We will neglect this term for
the moment, since we are more interested in whether there are relationship terms that
differentiate between half-siblingship and full-siblingship, and how such terms reach
across the paternal and maternal sides of the extended family.
• Half-brothers and full-brothers refer to each other as vjarnukwe, while half-sisters and
full-sisters refer to each other as daghaunukwe. Also, the sons of your mother's sisters are
called vjarnukwe, and the same principle applies to your mother's sisters' daughters, who
are called daghaunukwe. The same applies to your sons, who call your brothers' sons
vjarnukwe, and your daughters refer to your brothers' daughters as daghaunukwe. This
shows how the gender-related terms for siblings had a very inclusive tone across the
paternal and maternal sibling branches of extended families.
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