Chechen-Ingush - Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Descent, in the form of clan membership, was reckoned through the male line. Clans ( taip ) were grouped into tribes that generally corresponded to dialects; tribes were not considered kin groups, though they were traced to mythic ancestors. Clan fission could occur if a feud or other serious disagreement led a family to adopt a different name or if a family needed to hide its identity from the authorities (as happened in czarist times), but in general clans strove to become as large as possible. Modern family names are said to derive generally from the clan name among the Ingush but from the first name of a paternal ancestor (the paternal grandfather, when family names were fixed, and by now a more distant ancestor) among the Chechens.

Kinship Terminology. The kinship system is minimally classificatory: basic terms (mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, wife, husband) are combined to yield transparent phrases such as "mother's father," "father's father's sister," etc. The only simplex classificatory terms appear to be nuskal ("daughter-in-law"—the element nus- is pan-Caucasian and an evident Indo-Europeanism), shicha ("first cousin," male or female), and meakhcha ("second cousin," male or female); the latter two have the Turkic suffix *chi.