Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/289



Pages 43 to 45.

In the Samoan classification of relatives two principles, sex and age, are of the most primary importance. Relationship terms are never used as terms of address, a name or nickname being used even to father or mother. Relatives of the same age or within a year or two younger to five or ten years older are classified as of the speaker's generation, and of the same sex or of the opposite sex. Thus a girl will call her sister, her aunt, her niece, and her female cousin who are nearly of the same age, uso, and a boy will do the same for his brother, uncle, nephew, or male cousin. For relationships between siblings of opposite sex there are two terms, tuafafine and tuagane, female relative of the same age group of a male, and male relative of the same age group of a female. (The term uso has no such subdivisions.)

The next most important term is applied to younger relatives of either sex, the word tei. Whether a child is so classified by an older relative depends not so much on how many years younger the child may be, but rather on the amount of care that the elder has taken of it. So a girl will call a cousin two years younger than herself her tei, if she has lived near by, but an equally youthful cousin who has grown up in a distant village until both are grown will be called uso. It is notable that there is no term for elder relative. The terms uso, tufafine and tuagane all carry the feeling of contemporaneousness,