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Is there a word in English that denotes money set aside (or money given to the mother/father/parents) at the birth of a child designated for the upkeep of the child or as a gift to the adult the child is to become?

When you query the Google News corpus pre-trained model (3 million 300-dimension word vectors) using python here,

import gensim

model = gensim.models.KeyedVectors.load_word2vec_format('GoogleNews-vectors-negative300.bin',
                                                        binary=True)

# What word is to child as dowry/"bride price" is to marriage?
# "dowry - marriage + child" looks like:
model.most_similar_cosmul(positive=['dowry', 'child'], negative=['marriage'])

you get this as an output:

[('toddler', 0.8820212483406067),
 ('infant', 0.8791450262069702),
 ('childs', 0.8452366590499878),
 ('chld', 0.8431567549705505),
 ('chid', 0.8396517038345337),
 ('newborn', 0.836097776889801),
 ('children', 0.8355128765106201),
 ('anganwadi_worker', 0.8350832462310791),
 ('chilren', 0.8305007219314575),
 ('Child', 0.8303987383842468)]
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    Inheritance? Although I suppose that does not specifically connote money given at the birth of the beneficiary - it more strongly connotes money given on the death of the giver. It is not a traditional social pattern in the way that dowries are, so there is probably no specific word for the practice. Birth-money would probably be a good candidate to coin a new phrase.
    – Steve
    Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 13:35
  • I'm going to go with Heritage™ for now.
    – Dave Babbitt
    Commented Jun 29, 2019 at 23:01
  • (BTW, you guys are of exquisitely high quality for a community website.)
    – Dave Babbitt
    Commented Jun 29, 2019 at 23:10

1 Answer 1

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  • trust fund

All babies born between September 2002 and 2 January 2011 got £50-£1,000 free from the Government to save in a Child Trust Fund

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/child-trust-fund-vouchers/

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    This is the most appropriate modern term (in US) that corresponds to the old-fashioned dowry. Older or alternate terms are legacy, birthright, inheritance, bequest.
    – Mitch
    Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 13:30
  • Trust funds do not need to be for the benefit of new-born babies or even children. Or even individuals. And CTF's have been replaced by 'Junior ISAs' in the UK.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 15:08
  • There are other applications for trusts, but when money is set aside for a child it is usually in the form of a trust, with trustees taking responsibility for the money before the child reaches majority. "trust fund" might also be used informally, like "college fund", without a legal trust being involved.
    – Owain
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 16:55
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    Another term would be "Child support" (or maintenance or even just support). It is regular payments (e.g., monthly) as opposed to a one-time payment.
    – Mike Harris
    Commented Jun 27, 2019 at 14:18
  • Legacy, inheritance and bequest generally need someone to die, whereas the question (and the answer "trust fund") assumes a gift by the living.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Commented Jun 27, 2019 at 20:55

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