(no subject)

[cellio]

Is there a word in English to designate the person who is my husband's brother-in-law? Saying that he is my brother-in-law implies, to me, that either he is my sister's husband or my husband's brother. The person I'm describing is my husband's sister's husband.

I don't need this word often, but the person in question comes up in conversation just often enough to cause me to trip over this too many times.

Comments

[ironangel]

there isn't a single word, no. there also isn't a word for the relationship between my in-laws (ben's parents) and my parents; apparently there is in hungarian.

I usually say ben's x-in-law - assuming they know who ben is!

hm. thinking about this, ben has one sibling who is single. I guess this is just how I picture it, then...

[magid.livejournal.com]

There's a word in Hebrew for the relationship between the parents of people who are married to each other, also.

I find it interesting how some cultures recognize different (more?) relationships as important enough to have a single word to identify them. (I suspect that in some language somewhere, there are different words for the 2 different meanings of brother-in-law, too....)i

[arib.livejournal.com]

yeah, machatanim, I think.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Considering that Japanese (and Chinese too, I think) has a different word for {older,younger} x {sister, brother} and a different word for aunts and uncles (and their children your cousins) depending on which parent they're blood-related to and whether they're older or younger than that parent, it seems reasonable to assume that they have different words for the weird in-law relationships.

The bizarre part is that all the words are written differently, but all the cousin, aunt, and uncle words are pronounced the same as each other. :)