SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 215 



very definite names with cognates in all Aryan tongues 

 for mother's brother and father's sister. Only when 

 exogamy succeeded endogamy as the ruling custom 

 would such names become necessary, and such change 

 in custom hardly preceded the origin of the Aryan 

 names for relationship. This expectation is justified in 

 so far that the Teutonic words for mother's brother and 

 father's sister do not find co-radicates of the same sense 

 in all Aryan tongues. Further, their significance in the 

 Teutonic dialects is itself very variable, and their 

 primitive sense by no means clear. 



The word for mother's brother is O.H.G. dheim, 

 M.H.G. dheim and 6ham, A.S. edm for eahdm, 0. 

 Fries, em, M.L.G. ohm. The O.H.G. dheim is 

 glossed avunculus, maternal uncle, and hoheimes sun, 

 consobrinus, cousin-german through the mother. Prob- 

 ably the word has the same root as Latin avus and 

 Gothic ava (grandmother), but the source of the word 

 is very obscure, and its Gothic form, which might have 

 been of assistance, has not been preserved. In late 

 German, at any rate, the word is applied to father's 

 brother and father's sister's husband. Comparatively 

 early it is used of the sister's son or nephew, and then 

 for other blood-relatives. In the second or exogamous 

 period of the matriarchate, the mother's brother plays 

 an important part, 1 and it is noteworthy that the two 

 chief uses of oheim, i.e. for mother's brother and sister's 



1 One among many fossil indications of this occurs when Brunhilda in the 

 Nibelungetilied gives her castle and lands in charge to one ir hdhsten mdge (er was ir 

 muoter bruoder), when she leaves for Worms. He is to look after it until her 

 husband can come and manage it. Ultimately, of course, the latter will in turn 

 be succeeded by her daughter's husband. Compare Creon's relation to Oedipus. 



