Georgians - Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Georgian families are typically of three generations: an older couple and married sons with children, plus unmarried sons and daughters. Increasingly, however, married sons may work in separate places and so form semi-independent households. Families are grouped together into patrilineages ( sadzmo ) , or "branches" ( sht'o ) of four to seven generations. In villages, families of a single branch occupy a section of adjacent houses. A branch also refers to all relatives up through the seventh degree, with whom marriage is prohibited by the church. In addition, people with the same surname ( mogvare ) assume they are related and do not marry. Families from western Georgia tend to have surnames ending in -dze, those from eastern Georgia in -shvili; Mingrelian, Svan, and some aristocratic family names have other endings. Many surnames are further identified with specific regions and villages.

Membership in all kin groups is patrilineal, marriage is exogamous, and residence patrilocal. Thus a villager grows up among his father's kin and sees his mother's relatives as guests. Nonetheless, Georgians consider their mothers' and grandmothers' relatives close "blood" kin, the same as their fathers', and visit them frequently if they live in the same town. Adults call on both their fathers' and mothers' relatives for help and in both groups enjoy the reassurance of being among kin. A man's honor is closely bound up with his mother, and his conduct reflects back on her most of all. A woman usually does not take her husband's name when she marries. She remains under her father's and brothers' protection throughout her life, but she is buried with her husband.

Georgians also recognize several categories of "spiritual" kin. In pre-Soviet times a nobleman sometimes gave his child to be suckled and raised by a peasant's wife. The child and the mother's own children would then be "milk brothers/sisters" ( dzudzumt'e ) , binding the families for generations. As a variation, a grown man could publicly touch his lips to the breast of a woman, and so become adopted into a family. Even today two people who feel strong affection for each other cut their fingers, let their blood intermingle, and swear siblinghood. In a form of ritual kinship contracted between a man and woman, the couple could have affectionate, even intimate relations; on the other hand, since they were considered kin, they could not marry (this custom, known as ts'ats'loba in the mountain province of Pshavi, and as sts'orproba in the neighboring district of Khevsureti, was practiced up to the early years of the twentieth century). All Georgian children today have godparents; those of the first child are the mother's and father's lifelong best friends, who stood with them at their wedding. Parents' and godparents' descendants should not marry for fourteen generations.

Kinship Terminology. A Georgian names relatives by their relation to his or her ancestral line; maternal and paternal lines are not distinguished. Blood uncles are called by a special term ( bidza or dzia ) and their wives by another ( bitsola ) . All other relatives are referred to by compound terms of the form "mother's sister," "grandfather's brother's wife," "brother's child's child," and so on. Terms distinguish gender when counting up generations, but not down. "Uncle" and "mother's sister" ( deida ) are general terms of respect for older people; an older woman of the same village is "uncle's wife." A wife has a set of terms to call her husband's mother, father, brother, and sister; and the husband likewise has a separate set for his wife's immediate kin (e.g., husband's mother, dedamtili; wife's mother, sidedri ) . All the members of each family then reciprocate with a single term. Husbands of sisters, wives of brothers, a married couple, and the parents of a married couple each have a reciprocal term. There is also a complete set of terms for families joined through godparenthood.