# Collective nouns **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2000, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945 "2000-12-16T22:23:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ACappellaCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@ACappellaCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ACappellaCat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2000, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/1 "2000-12-16T22:23:13Z")
Okay, this has bugged me for a long time. My grandmother and grandfather are known, collectively, as my grandparents. My mother and father, my parents. If I had more than one brother or sister, they would be my siblings. What, then, is the collective noun for my aunt and uncle? I’m referring to the married unit (as in, my dad’s sister and her husband), not my parents’ siblings (as in, my dad’s sisters). Help save my sanity in time for the holidays. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2000, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/2 "2000-12-16T22:46:05Z")
I tried a search, which you’ve probably done, and couldn’t find it. Why not just call them your cousins’ parents? I’m not sure there is a collective noun for aunts and uncles. If there were, I’d have heard it by now. I’m very old, you see. Where’s **lexicon**? He’d know. ---
**Author:** ![ACappellaCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@ACappellaCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ACappellaCat)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2000, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/3 "2000-12-16T22:51:18Z")
Well, yeah. I could call them my aunt and uncle, too. _grin_ It just seems strange to me that there are collective nouns for other couples you’re related to, but apparently not one for your aunt and uncle. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2000, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/4 "2000-12-17T00:07:56Z")
Well, it **is** strange. (And I was kidding with the cousins’ parents thing.) I don’t think the word exists, so it’s going to be up to us to invent one. How about “satellites”? Because aunts and uncles are on the fringe of the immediate family. And I’ve been baby **sat** by an aunt, who also liked to **tell** stories about growing up with my mom. Boy, that’s really lame. I’ll try harder. ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2000, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/5 "2000-12-17T00:15:54Z")
I don’t think English has a collective noun for an aunt-uncle combination. For most societies, people tended to live with extended families where aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents were all living together or very close to one another. In the Middle Ages, your aunt and uncle would have lived in the next shack over and probably not the next town over. ---
**Author:** ![StephenG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@StephenG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StephenG)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2000, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/6 "2000-12-17T01:43:59Z")
Collective nouns … Relative clauses … Relative nouns? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2000, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/7 "2000-12-17T02:24:45Z")
How about “grandsiblings?” ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2000, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/8 "2000-12-17T02:35:11Z")
Don’t feel bad. Some languages don’t even have collective nouns for parents. For example, in Hindi they say _mâmbâp_ and in Turkish they say _annebaba_, both of which mean literally ‘motherfather’. So you could just coin an analogous term: “auntuncle.” ---
**Author:** ![peace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@peace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peace)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2000, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/9 "2000-12-17T03:18:46Z")
## Some languages are good with “rain” (English), some, with “snow” (Eskimo), some, I guess, with relatives and in- laws (BTW, is there a single word? like “extended family-on-both sides”). Anyway, I know that some languages have a word for “brothers & sisters”, some for sister’s husband, some can name everyone, just by saying sister’s-husbabd-nephew’s-daughter. Peace ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2000, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/collective-nouns/45945/10 "2000-12-18T11:59:07Z")
In Hindi, they have very precise names for every different sort of uncle and aunt. You have your father’s older brother, father’s younger brother, and their wives; father’s sister and her husband; mother’s brother, mother’s sister, and their spouses. That’s ten right there. Then there are the male and female _cousins_–multiply by two. I guess that’s what comes of living in very extended families! Even though in India they differentiate all the relatives with such fine distinctions, they tend to collapse them conceptually: your parents’s cousins become uncles & aunts, while your cousins are called “brother” and “sister”. Yet that doesn’t stop them from marrying their first cousins. Hmmm…