Family Words in Different Languages: Mother, Aunt, Husband and More

Mother is madre in Spanish, μητέρα in Greek, 어머니 in Korean and माँ in Hindi. Aunt is tante in French and German and zia in Italian, but in Turkish the most common word is hala, which means a father’s sister. That is the fun part of family words. Many languages have no single word for “aunt”, “uncle” or “grandmother”. They have one for each side of the family.

Below are 15 family words in a selection of languages with different scripts. Each one links to its full page on our free Say it in any language tool.

#Where the words come from

Each /tools/say page lists an English word in up to 53 languages. The words come from how often they appear in film and TV subtitles (the OpenSubtitles 2018 frequency lists), matched to English through Wiktionary. So every word is one people actually say, and the page shows where it ranks in that language.

Two things to keep in mind:

• The lists are lowercase because they come from word counts. German capitalizes nouns, so we write Mutter, Vater and Tante here the way you’d see them in a sentence.
• When a language splits a word by side of the family, age or gender, the full page shows the English meaning next to the word. That’s where every maternal and paternal note in this post comes from.

#Mother in different languages

Mother is one of the words found in all 53 languages. It is most common in Georgian, where დედა is the 71st most used word.

See “mother” in all 53 languages →

#Father and dad in different languages

Georgian is famous among language learners for this one. Its word for mother is დედა, and its word for father, მამა, is pronounced “mama”. Father ranks #17 in Georgian. In Chinese, 爸爸 (“dad”) is the 35th most used word.

See “father” in all 53 languages → · See “dad” in all 31 languages →

#Sister and brother: older or younger?

In English a sister is a sister. In many Asian languages, the everyday word tells you whether she’s older.

The Korean words depend on who is speaking too. The data glosses 언니 as “older sister of a female” and 형 as “older brother of a male”.

See “sister” in all 51 languages → · See “brother” in all 53 languages →

#Aunt in different languages

This is where the maternal and paternal split shows most. The third column is the English meaning from the data.

If you’re writing to an aunt in Turkish, Persian, Korean or Tamil, find out which side of the family she’s on first. The page only shows the most common word for each language, so the other side’s word may exist without being listed.

Vietnamese cô ranks #17, far above any other language. The next section explains why.

See “aunt” in all 37 languages →

#Uncle in different languages

Swedish builds the side into the word: farbror is literally “father-brother”, the same way mormor below is “mother-mother”. In Hebrew, uncle (דוד) and aunt (דודה) are a matching pair.

See “uncle” in all 46 languages →

#Why Vietnamese family words rank so high

In Vietnamese, family words also work as pronouns. You call an older woman bà (“grandmother”), and she may call herself bà too. The data shows this directly. The English meanings for these words start with “I/me” or “you”:

Getting these right is a big part of sounding natural in Vietnamese. The Vietnamese word list shows how many of them are in the top few hundred.

#Grandmother and grandfather in different languages

Korean 할머니 and 할아버지 can also mean any elderly woman or man; the data glosses them “grandmother; elderly female” and “grandfather; elderly male”. The Hindi and Urdu pairs are the same words in two scripts. The Persian and Urdu comparison shows how much vocabulary those two share.

See “grandmother” in all 46 languages → · See “grandfather” in all 46 languages →

#Husband and wife in different languages

Estonian uses one word, abikaasa, for husband and wife alike (“spouse”). In Afrikaans the word for husband is simply man, ranked #84. Chinese is where wife is most common: 妻子 ranks #125.

See “husband” in all 42 languages → · See “wife” in all 41 languages →

#Son and daughter in different languages

Both words are most common in Persian, where پسر ranks #102 and دختر #128.

See “son” in all 50 languages → · See “daughter” in all 46 languages →

#Child and baby in different languages

Chinese 孩子 is the 18th most used word in the Chinese list, and Tamil குழந்தை ranks #82.

See “child” in all 52 languages → · See “baby” in all 41 languages → · See “kid” in all 30 languages →

#Family in different languages

Family shows up in 52 languages. Dutch and Finnish get more specific: gezin and perhe are both glossed “immediate family”.

See “family” in all 52 languages →

#Friend in different languages

Hindi दोस्त and Persian دوست are the same word. Friend is most common in Chinese, where 朋友 is the 26th most used word.

See “friend” in all 52 languages →

#How to learn family words so they stick

A list like this is a start. Family words stick when you use them about real people.

• Draw your own family tree and label it in your target language, including the maternal and paternal words if your language has them.
• Describe your family to someone. “My mother’s sister lives in…” makes you choose the right word. Family is one of the easiest language exchange conversation topics because everyone has something to say.
• Learn the script, not only the sound. If your language uses one, the alphabet pages show every letter.

On LangX, you’re matched with people who speak the language you’re learning and are learning yours. Tell your partner about your family, and they can correct your message directly (corrections are unlimited on every plan). If a word stumps you, translation is built into the chat. The app has a free plan, and you can get it here. If you don’t have a partner yet, see how to find a language exchange partner.

For words beyond the family, like freedom, soul and destiny, see powerful words in different languages.

#FAQ

#How do you say “aunt” in different languages?

French and German tante, Italian zia, Portuguese tia, Hebrew דודה and Indonesian bibi. Chinese 阿姨, Korean 이모 and Persian خاله are maternal aunts, and Turkish hala and Tamil அத்தை are paternal aunts. The aunt page has 37 languages.

#Which languages have different words for maternal and paternal relatives?

In our data, the aunt, uncle and grandparent pages show a split for Chinese, Korean, Persian, Turkish, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Albanian, Swedish and several Slavic languages. Plenty of other languages make the distinction too.

#What is the word for “husband” in Chinese?

丈夫, which ranks #138 in Chinese. Wife is 妻子 (#125).

#Why do some family words have strange meanings on the full pages?

The words come from film and TV subtitles, matched to English through Wiktionary. Most matches are exact. A few pick up a pronoun, a nickname or an insult that contains the family word, and the full page always shows the English meaning next to it so you can tell.