The basic feature of the Igbo system (Ardener 1954) that is the most readily apparent is the Hawaiian generational pattern in which all of Ego’s relatives of the same generation are placed into a single category.
Igbo Kinship Terms
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Referring to his parent’s generation, he uses essentially the same term nna for his father, father’s brother, and mother’s brother, and similarly classifies his mother, mother’s sister and father’s sister as nne. (The terms nna/nne ukwu are basically variants on the nna/nne theme and can be glossed as “big father/mother”, thus implying seniority.) The seniority principle is also applied to younger siblings of Ego’s parents who are actually given brother/sister terms that tend to emphasize similarities and differences in chronological age. This reflects a basic emphasis in Igbo social organization that is incorporated into a formal system of age sets and age grades that we will investigate in a later module. The generational principle is also apparent in Ego’s own generation where alternative forms of the basic sibling terms, nwa nna/nwa nne (father’s child/mother’s child) are applied to a wide range of relatives. Broad generational identification is further apparent in Ego’s children’s generation in the application of the nwa (child) term. Seniority is marked in the special terms for Ego’s oldest son (okpara) and daughter (ada). These designation mark special age based statuses. The okpara is Ego’s main heir, and both he and the ada perform leadership functions within the immediate family and the wider descent group.
A second look at the terms applied in Ego’s own generation indicates
the significance of two other factors (polygamy and complementary filiation),
which in
combination create a delineation and contrast of three major descent
groups:
Igbo Terms According to Patrilineal
Descent
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The umunne, indicated in yellow, includes Ego and his full brothers and sisters (individually references as nwa nne), who, as children of a single mother, form a special domestic and social subunit within the larger patrilineal family. They also comprised the core of an actual or potential patrilineal segment that will assume increasing importance over time as membership grows on the basis of patrilineal descent. (Note that inclusion in this unit is extended only to the children of its male members).
The umunna, indicate in blue, includes Ego's half brothers and sisters (individually referenced asnwa nna) who are born to Ego’s father’s wives other than his mother. He is less close to them than to his full siblings, and interacts with them in terms of inclusion with a broader patrilineal group that also incorporates a large group of relatives descended from an ancestor several generations removed.
The umune, indicated in red, comprises the relatives of Ego’s mother’s patrilineage, with whom, as we have noted in the previous unit, he has an extremely special relationship involving joking, indulgence, and even protection from punishment within his own patrilineage. This pattern is partially marked in the terminology by the extension of the more intimate nwa nne sibling term to cousins in this group. However, the group is also distinguished from Ego’s more immediate maternal group, the umunne, in two ways. Firstly, in spite of the fact that Ego uses several terms to mark different relatives within his mother’s patrilineage, they use only a single term for him, okele. (You can observe this usage in the application of this term to all of the children of the women in Ego’s own patrilineage, i.e., his sisters’ and daughters’ children for whom he is an umune member.) Secondly, the head of his mother’s patrilineal receives a special term, nna oce, which originally marks his mother’s father, but which eventually passes on down the lineage to Ego’s mother’s brother, and then mother’s brother’s son, after their deaths in much the same way as the agya (father) term is inherited the Crow based matrilineal Akan system.
Igbo Terms, Skewing Rule
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Both the succession of the nna oce status and the corresponding
use of the okele term reflect the application of the Omaha
skewing rule to accomplish its main
purpose, to identify the members of a person’s mother’s patrilineal
group. A third relevant term, nne oce, has a somewhat more
complex dynamic. It is originally applied to Ego's mother's mother. It
follows a succession rule from the original relative to the wives of subsequent
nna
oce, i.e. from mother-in-law to daughter -in-law, and not through
patrilineally related women, the more usual pattern in a Omaha system.
This peculiarity makes some sense in terms of the Igbo territorial system.
Since the rule of village exogamy specifies that all the umune's
women must move to other villages upon marriage, the many block of women
resident in the groups territory, and who are actually or potentially nna
oce, have married in and are related within it as affines.
Insofar as it is basicallly an Omaha system, the Igbo terms indicate similarities to Dani kin terms. Note especially the similarities between the nna oce term, as it descends over time, and the Dani equivalent, ami, and the strict equivalence between okele in Igbo and ejak in Dani. Of course the Dani use of a single term, akoja, for women in mother's lineage is not followed in the Igbo system.