’Sister’, ’Daughter’ and ’Brother’ — Etymological Discussion of a Few Borrowed Uralic Kinship Terms

Abstract

In this article, three Indo-European loan etymologies for Uralic kinship terms meaning ’sister’, ’daughter’ and ’brother’ are discussed and a thorough etymological analysis of the words is given based on the latest research. An attempt is made to try and untangle the multitude of ways in which the relationship of these words can be interpreted and to provide the most probable scenario for whence the words entered the lexicons of Uralic languages. Both the phonological and the semantic side — which has often been greatly neglected in Uralic etymology — of the loan etymologies are explored.

Keywords

• uralic languages; etymology; loanword research; kinship terms