Iroquois kinship

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Main article: Kinship and descent

Iroquois kinship (also known as bifurcate merging) is a kinship system used to define family. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Iroquois system is one of the six major kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese).[citation needed]

Kinship system[edit]



Graphic of the Iroquois kinship system







Other populations found to have the Iroquois system are

  1. The entire population of South India;
  2. The Dravidian population of India and Sri Lanka;

South India and Sri Lanka[edit]

The entire Hindu population of South India, numbering in the vicinity of 250 million people, uses the kinship tradition described above. This includes not only the traditional encouragement of wedding ties between cross-cousins, but also the use of kinship terms in the following format:

  • One's mother's sister is also called mother, and her husband is called father;
  • One's father's brother is also called father, and his wife is called mother;
  • But, one's mother's brother is called father-in-law, and his wife is called mother-in-law; and,
  • One's father's sister is called mother-in-law, and her husband is called father-in-law

Parallel cousins are considered siblings. It is forbidden for Ego to wed them. Cross cousins are NOT considered siblings but termed Cousins; Ego may wed them.


Until recently, rural Chinese societies used the same system of kinship.

See also[edit]