中国亲戚的称呼游戏 Chinese relatives name game

When I married into a Chinese family, nobody ever warned me about the complicated “Chinese relatives name game” I would need to navigate – a world of completely novel terms for family members that have no exact equivalents in my native language of English.

我跟中国老公结婚的时候，没人告诉我“中国家庭亲属称呼游戏”的复杂程度。很多中国家庭成员的称呼在英语里没有对应，对我而言是全新的词组。

Consider this exchange that happened a few years ago while I spent the summer living with my in-laws in their rural village in Zhejiang province.

几年前，我和妯娌们在浙江农村的婆家度过了夏天。

During dinner one evening, my sister-in-law said our mother-in-law had spent the entire day planting the fields with a “jiujiu”, the Chinese term for uncles on the mother’s side of the family. Yet as I understood, we only had two uncles we addressed with this term – Older Jiujiu and Younger Jiujiu. Neither needed help in the fields, especially the younger one, who had just begun working as the village secretary. How could our mother-in-law possibly have assisted someone called jiujiu?

一天晚饭的时候，我的弟妹说，婆婆花了一整天和“舅舅”种地。但我知道我们只有大舅和小舅，他们从来不需要帮着种地，特别是已经当上村干部的小舅。那么婆婆怎么会帮助第三个“舅舅”呢？

So my sister-in-law clarified, “Oh, that’s the little brother of the godfather,” the very same godfather designated to watch over my husband Jun.

弟妹说，这个“舅舅”是我丈夫骏的干爹的弟弟。

Suddenly, I recalled some time ago when my mother-in-law said the godfather was actually a family relative, but I had forgotten how and asked my sister-in-law to explain. “He’s the son ofGunainai.”

我忽然回忆起婆婆曾说过，干爹其实是家里的亲戚，但我忘了该怎么称呼他。我求助弟妹，她说，干爹就是姑奶奶的儿子。

“Gunainai?” In my conversational climb through this family tree, I felt increasingly tangled in its branches.

“姑奶奶？”我完全无法理解亲戚间的联系了。

My mother-in-law, who must have already sensed my confusion while overhearing the conversation, sat down to clear things up. “Gunainai is the older sister ofWaigong,” our maternal grandfather. “I call her ‘Guma’, you call her ‘Gunainai’.”

婆婆听到了我们的对话，感觉到我的困惑，就坐下来解释：“姑奶奶就是外公的姐姐。我叫她姑妈，你要叫她姑奶奶。”

“So many different names,” I remarked with a sigh. Then I shared how, in the US, we used the same term for grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles on both sides of the family. But in my efforts to introduce this difference, I revealed how much I still had to learn by wrongly using the Chinese term “ayi” to refer to the younger aunt on the father’s side.

我叹了口气：“太多不同的称呼了。”于是我告诉她们在美国，我们对祖父母、外祖父母、姑姑姨妈和舅舅叔伯的称呼没有那么细致。但是我在介绍过程中，还是没用对“阿姨”这个词。

 “Don’t you mean ‘shenshen’?” my sister-in-law asked, suppressing a grin.

我弟妹问：“你是想说婶婶吧？”

My face flushed red from embarrassment, a familiar feeling for a foreigner in China, especially one trying to juggle such a complex set of family terms. “Sorry,shenshen. So, who do I callayi then?”

我脸一红，涌出老外在中国时那种熟悉的感觉，特别是试图解释复杂的家族词汇。“抱歉，我是想说婶婶，那么谁是阿姨呢？”

“Ayi is my younger sister,” my mother-in-law said.

我婆婆说：“阿姨就是我的妹妹。”

“And you callAyi’s husband ‘Yifu’,” added my sister-in-law.

我弟妹说：“阿姨的老公就是姨夫。”

I slapped my forehead. “Terrible! Last time I sawAyi I referred to her husband as ‘Shushu’,” a word meant for younger uncles on the father’s side.

我拍了一下脑门。“坏了！上次我管姨夫叫叔叔了。”

My sister-in-law flashed me a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry about it. It’s easy to feel as if you’re lost.”

弟妹同情地笑了一下说：“没事，搞混了很正常。”

Then, as if I wasn’t already baffled, she gazed at her daughter, a baby at the time, and said, “She will call Jun’s oldest brotherDabo.”Dabo? I’d never heard the term in my entire life — at least, the life that had included my Chinese family.

她对着自己女儿说：“她管骏的哥哥叫大伯。”我一辈子都没听说过“大伯”这个词。

Years have passed since that conversation and still, whenever I appear at large family gatherings – those that attract a more diverse mix of relatives such as theGunainaiorAyi -- I invariably commit at least one gaffe, if not more, while attempting to address someone.

几年过去了，我出席大家族聚会的时候，还是会至少搞错一个人的称呼。

So I have to wonder, how long will it take me before I can keep all of these names and relations together? Will mastering the “Chinese relatives name game” require a lifetime of practice?

我想知道自己什么时候才能完全掌握各种称呼呢？是不是需要一辈子的时间练习？