[PW] Names for relatives

[David Anderson]

Jocelyn,

Knowing that Swedish names for relatives are pretty specific (eg, morfar for 
mother's father, farmor for father's mother, farfar for father's father),
I inquired of a Swedish cousin in regards to in-laws. I am including his 
response to this note.

Now to your question: there is no specific name for our parents' 
relationship. You talk about mother in law, daughter in law etc. We put
in the world svär- (I don´t know if you can see dots an rings so I use ae 
for ä and aa for å) The world svär- goes back to the very old
indoeuropean languages, so- that ment "belonging to the family", "own".

In ancient swedish father in law was swaer and mother i law was called 
swaera. Svaer- can be combined with: father, mother, son and daughter.

My brother's wife Irene and my wife's sisters I call svaegerska and [my 
wife] Maria's brother is my svaager and I am [my brother's wife] Irene's 
svaager.

Sincerely,

David

David C Anderson
RockyDell Resources
340 Killdeer Court
Lincoln, CA 95648-2474 USA
916/408-0110
rockydell at digitalpath.net
http://rockydellresources.homestead.com

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