خواهرزاده

The خواهرزاده / برادرزاده distinction maps onto a wider Iranian kinship logic where blood relationships are tracked with surgical precision. There are eight separate words for cousins (one for each combination of which parent's sibling and the cousin's gender). There are four separate words for in-law parents. The system is built to encode exact information about how two people are related, because in extended Iranian families, those exact distinctions used to govern (and in many places still govern) inheritance, marriage eligibility, ritual obligation, and seating order at family gatherings.