Understanding family relationships is sometimes very difficult. It used to be, when huge families of several generations lived under the same roof, remembering who is who and by whom was not difficult, because all these ingenious terms were constantly heard. Nowadays, when relatives are sometimes scattered across the globe and come together only on the occasion of major events, the words "sister-in-law", "brother-in-law", "brother-in-law", "daughter-in-law", etc. many of us seem strange and completely incomprehensible. And yet, let's try to restore the names of family ties in our tribal memory so that later on occasion I would not have to guess: “Brother's wife - who is she to me?”
How to call a sibling wife
For clarity, let us imagine a specific family, otherwise our heads may become dizzy from endlessly intersecting kinship vectors. So, there lived, there were two siblings Ivan and Vasily. Both became serious men and got married. Ivan on Marya, and Vasily on Daria. And do you think that we will need to answer the question, for example, of Ivan: "Brother's wife, who is she to me?" Indeed, who does Daria bring him now?
The older generation would answer this question that such a woman in Russia was most often called a sister-in-law, in some areas - ash, and closer to Ukraine she already had a different name - brother or yatrovka.
Each of the young wives - Mary, and Daria - now got a new relative - a daughter-in-law (that is, they are each other's daughter-in-law or fraudsters). By the way, their daughter-in-law can be called not only the mother-in-law with the mother-in-law, but also the husband’s brother (that is, Mary became the daughter-in-law of Vasily, and Daria became the daughter-in-law of Ivan), and the whole husband’s family.
Who is the brother's wife in terms of his own sister
And in the case when siblings live in the family, will the brother 's wife for the sister be called somehow differently? No, they haven’t invented anything new - for the sister, her brother’s wife will also turn out to be a daughter-in-law or, otherwise, a brother. But this sister herself for the daughter-in-law will already be a sister-in-law. By the way, in some regions it was called the "sinister" (probably from an excess of feelings!).
It is interesting that in the old days cousins were called "bro" or "fraternal" (that's where these proud definitions of the era of the 90s come from!), And their wives, respectively, "bros". That is, figuring out: “Brother’s wife - who is she to me?”, Know that siblings and cousins, like their wives, are defined in slightly different terms.
A little more about the husband's family
Parsing who the brother’s wife is, we involuntarily dug deeper, and now we can no longer mention how, after the wedding, Marya or Daria will have to call her husband’s brother. For Mary, Vasily (husband’s sibling) is a brother-in-law, and, as you know, Daria can also call Ivan.
But if, for example, the same Daria has her own brother (let's call him Stepan), then for Vasily (Daria’s husband) he will be a brother-in-law or a schwager. And the son of Stepan, both for Basil and for Ivan, will be a shurich. True, the last term is now considered completely outdated, and almost no one remembers it (but you can demonstrate your erudition!).
Add a little about the imaginary and real relatives
And if we assume that Mary, the wife of Ivan, has a married sister, then for Ivan she will be considered a sister-in-law, and her husband, respectively, a sister-in-law. That is, it turns out that the brothers-in-law are family members whose wives are sisters. If we are talking about cousins, then their husbands among themselves will be considered already cousins.
As you can see, asking the question: “Who do I have to have my brother’s wife?”, We slowly sorted out the rest of the relationship. And who knows, maybe this information will help you maintain a warm relationship in your new family. By the way, a striking example is the interesting experiment conducted by British scientists. They gathered in a group of previously unfamiliar people, previously informing some that they were relatives among themselves. It is interesting that in the future it was these people who established the closest friendly relations among themselves, assuring the researchers that kindred feelings suddenly awoke in them.
A small parting word for those who figured out who such brother’s wife is
What is the name of the long series of relatives on the part of the wife and husband, we hope we all figured out. It’s just worth drawing yourself at least a primitive diagram of these connections once, and it will be an excellent hint to you at the beginning of your married life and a way to avoid awkward delays in determining a new relationship. And after some time, you yourself will be able, with the appearance of a connoisseur, to answer the question of a confused newly made relative: "Brother's wife - who is she to me?"
And you must admit that instead of building a verbal chain like: “sister of my brother’s wife”, it will be much easier to call kinship with one term “sister-in-law”. In addition, not fully owning these terms, we make it difficult for ourselves to perceive literary works (and the authors are very fond of using these names as relatives), as well as folklore and even everyday traditions that came to us from the past.