244 RELATIONSHIPS. 



another without asking, " Is he the father who begat him ? " 

 or, " Is she the mother who bore him ? " (It may not 

 be unworthy of remark here that the same word, miUraha, 

 is used both for begetting and for bearing children.) Con- 

 sequently there are no single words in Malagasy corre- 

 sponding to our " uncle " and " aunt ; " one must say 

 " father's brother," or " sister " or " mother's brother," or 

 " sister," as the case may be. And so it naturally follows 

 that there are also no single words for " nephew," or " niece ; " 

 these are all zanaka, " children," and if more minutely 

 described are distinguished as children of their father's or 

 mother's brothers or sisters. 



Bay, "father," does not seem to take the sense it has in 

 many Semitic languages of " maker " of a thing, but it is 

 used in a wide sense as an elder or superior ; and in address- 

 ing an elderly man it is common to call him ihahy, a word 

 which, together with dada, is the more familiar and affec- 

 tionate word used by children in addressing their parent ; 

 the latter word being perhaps more commonly used by sons, 

 and the former by daughters. It is singular, however, that 

 riny, "mother," does take the sense of author of a thing: 

 thus, rinirdno, a river, is literally " mother of waters ; " 

 rinitantily, a bee, is " mother of honey ; " rinivdhitra, a 

 capital, is " mother of towns ; " and rinivbla, capital, principal, 

 is " mother of money." And also, the four first months of 

 the four quarters of the year are called rinivintdna, "mother 

 of fate," or fortune, these being the principal months. In 

 the same manner, the word for child, zdnaka, is used as the 

 converse of riny, " mother," or " originator of a thing." Thus, 

 zdna-lbla is interest or usury, literally, " offspring of money," 

 while mizanaka, is to be at interest ; zanakdzo is a word for 

 the pieces of wood cut from a tree, " offspring of the tree ; " 

 zdna-tbhatra, the rungs of a ladder, is " offspring of a ladder ; " 

 and zana-tsbratra, vowels, are " offspring of writing." The 

 words aba and bdba, ada and daday and angy, are also used 

 for "father," while ngaliy is a respectful term for an elderly 

 man or any superior. 



In the same way, riny, " mother," or its more common and 

 familiar form, niny, is also used in a wide sense as a respect- 



