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I find it handy when talking about my sons and daughters I can just say my children. It's nice to say nieces instead of sibling's daughters. I wonder if there is a similar term for nieces and nephews together? I imagine I could say sibling's kids but I was hoping for a single word.

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  • @Orbling Hear hear!
    – WAF
    Dec 8, 2010 at 3:25
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    In italian, you have one word (nipote) for both, unfortunately the ambiguity doesn't stop there!
    – Benjol
    Dec 8, 2010 at 5:42
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    In some Norwegian dialects you could use "tantebarn" (lit. aunt-children) if you're female. Logically the male equivalent should be "onkelbarn" (uncle-children) but I've never heard it. (Maybe men don't speak that much about children? I've never had the need for a short word for it anyway) Mar 22, 2011 at 9:52
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    My parents' grandchildren . . and my in-laws' grandchildren. (FAIL) May 6, 2011 at 20:19
  • 1
    And in Esperanto there is a prefix ("ge-") meaning both sexes taken together, so, "genevoj" (the "j" marking the plural), in this case. Mar 19, 2012 at 22:33

2 Answers 2

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There seems to be no "official" word for "nieces and nephews".

You will find "nibling", by analogy with sibling. (But it is mentioned only in the "New Words & Slang" section of Merriam-Webster, or in sites like urbandictionary.com)

In this Yahoo answers thread, KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid's answer also mentions:

  • that there is no encompassing word for aunt/uncle either
  • that there is no male/female form of cousin.

The article "There isn't a word for it" (by Neville Goodman, British Journal of General Practice, 2005) also confirms that there is no word for nephews and nieces, and makes the following (humorous) suggestions:

The word sibling comes from Old English, and just means related by blood. I suggest taking the parental ‘p’ to replace the ‘s’, so aunts and uncles are ‘piblings’. Following the pattern, nephews and nieces become ‘niblings’, a nice word that describes what they do to their piblings' bank balances at Christmas and birthdays.

You can find the term used recently in this blog post "The Christmas Gift that Keeps On Giving", but you can also find it in one of the episodes of an old 1980 adventure series "The Moomins":

Excerpt from Moomin Winter featuring the word "nibling"

(from "Moomin Winter in Moomin Book 5")

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  • 7
    +1 purely for the moomins. Can I nominate 'ancles' for aunts and uncles?
    – CJM
    Dec 8, 2010 at 11:29
  • @CJM: you could, except it might be tricky to pronounce it right ('ancles') and still being able to differentiate it from 'uncles'. If the context is not accurate enough, one could believe your are talking about 'uncles' with a funny accent.
    – VonC
    Dec 8, 2010 at 11:33
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    @VonC, @CJM, and ankles :)
    – Benjol
    Dec 8, 2010 at 12:29
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    @CJM: How about "auncles" instead?
    – Jon Purdy
    Dec 8, 2010 at 17:44
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    +1 Generally probably the only road forward and there are Moomins, anything with Moomins gets voted up out of principle.
    – Orbling
    Dec 8, 2010 at 20:51
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Nibling is the most common, but alternatives include nephling or niefling:

nephling: (rare) A nibling
My dear neph-ling: I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as “Master of Arts.” […] Your affectionate uncle, Cinna Beverley. [link]


niefling: (rare) A nibling
I come from a very large family (three brothers, three sisters, about as many aunts and uncles, and loads more cousins and nieflings) almost all of whom I've fallen out of contact with and honestly don't feel bad about it. [link]

(Definitions from Wiktionary)

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