(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

[fiannaharpar.livejournal.com]

I'm now confused. I would call Dani's sister's husband my brother-in-law. Dani's sister being your sister-in-law.

That's how I had been using it, but apparently there are many interperetations.

[cellio]

Well, see, by that reasoning, then "brother-in-law" could mean any of the following:

1. my sister's husband
2. my husband's brother
3. my sister's husband's brother
4. my husband's sister's husband

If you permit 3 and 4, then you really don't have a strong case to not also permit:

5. my sister's husband's brother's wife's brother
6. my husband's sister's husband's brother

I mean, once you've gone two steps out, why not 3, or 4, or N?

I'm an engineer. I want to reduce ambiguity. In an ideal world, I would be able to conveniently distinguish 1 and 2 from each other.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The steps are of different quality, and makes more sense if you consider married couples to be one pseudo-single person. You're really only going one sibling-link to call both Dani's brother and his wife your whatever-in-law. The in-law part then only implies that traversing one or more marriage-links is necessary. I suppose in cultures that allow multiple-way marriages it becomes possible to traverse 3 or 4 marriage-links and still only one sibling-link to get to an X-in-law.

Inlaws and Outlaws :D

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Forgive the subject line, it's the punchline of an old joke. "If marriage is outlawed, then only outlaws will have in-laws." I did a search on Google for "husband's sister's husband" and came up with only five pages, most of which were irrelevant. The rest seem evenly divided between "brother-in-law" and "no relation".

Since there doesn't appear to be a standardized word in English, you may want to consider stealing the appropriate term from the Hindu language. Of course then you'd spend more time explaining the term then you would have explaining the relationship. :D Check it out!
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jishnu/101/FamilyAndRelations/default.asp?l1=nul