Welsh Gender Neutral Family Terms
We've come up with some gender neutral Welsh family terms in the LGBTQIA+ Welsh discord I run (dm for link) lately and so far people seem to like the terms. So, this is an introduction to some of the terms we've come up with so far.
I plan to make polls eventually with these terms and any other suggestions you might have and run a little tournament to see which terms are favoured most by Welsh speaking LGBTQIA+ people.
Without further ado, here are the terms:
(f. = feminine grammatical gender, m. = masculine grammatical gender)
Chwaed(ion) f. - Sibling(s)
[‘chwaer’ (sister) + ‘brawd’ (brother). Rhymes with ‘gwaed’ (blood), reminiscent of family ties]
Chwaerydd m. - Sibling
['chwaer' + '-ydd' (masculine suffix) ]
Chwaed fy mam / fy nhad - Aunt/Uncle (Literally, my mother’s/father’s sibling)
[Literal translation (my mother’s / father’s sibling) ]
Naith f. - Niece/Nephew
[‘nith’ (niece) + ‘nai’ (nephew) ]
Dain (Deiniau) f. - Grandparent(s)
[‘taid’ (grandfather)+ t > d + ‘nain’ (grandmother) ]
Nam-gu f.- (Grandparent)
['fy nhad-cu' + 'fy mam-gu']
Of course, these are only suggestions. So far, chwaed has been very popular and dain has been preferred over nam-gu because it's less South Walian. But I'm interested to hear what you think or hear if you have any suggestions of your own!
Please share this post so we can get a larger sample size. Diolch!
NB:
These terms have come from multiple users, so bear that in mind with feedback. I can pass on suggestions to the users who coined them.
Grammatical gender is unavoidable in Welsh, but grammatical gender does not necessarily equal gender gender. E.g. the German word for girl 'maedchen' is grammatically neutral. In addition to this, certain suffixes in Welsh are gendered, which affects how words behave in certain sentences.
