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Rh are often more descriptive than our own. In some forms of this system true descriptive terms are found in habitual use. Thus, in the coastal systems of Fiji the mother's brother is of ten called ngandina (ngane, sister of a man, and tina, mother), this term being used in place of the vungo already mentioned. Similar uses of descriptive terms occur in other parts of Melanesia. Thus, in Santa Cruz the father's sister is called inwerderde (inwe, sister, and derde, father). This relative is one for whom Melanesian systems of relationship not infrequently possess no special designation, and the use of a descriptive term suggests a recent process which has come into action in order to denote a relative who had previously lacked any special designation.

If "descriptive" is thus an inappropriate name for our own system, it will be necessary to find another, and I should like boldly to recognise the direct dependence of its characters on the institution of the family and to speak of it as the "family system."

While I thus reject the term "descriptive" as a proper name for the terminology of relationship with which we are especially familiar, it does not follow that there may not be systems of denoting relationship which properly deserve this title. In Samoa a mode of denoting relatives is often used in which the great majority of the terms are descriptive. Thus, the only term which I could obtain for the father's brother's son was atalii o le uso o le tama, which is literally "son of the brother