International forms of address for parents

[Gary]

@rinari

Slightly off-topic, but I never knew this was the case outside of Vietnamese! We also have specific honorifics to denote relatives by age, marriage, relation, and “ranking.” The term for an aunt who’s younger than your mother or father (depending on who they’re related to) is different for an aunt who is older than your mother or father. Even my cousin, who’s older than me in age, has to refer to me as a “higher-ranking” or superior cousin (deferring to me as if I’m older) because my parents are older than his! That’s crazy that that system exists elsewhere, for some reason I thought it was way too complicated to exist outside of Vietnam haha…

I know what you mean. When I was a young child I had to rehearse to remember the proper terms of address for each and every relative; made even more difficult since my great-grandfathers had more than one wife as was common back in the day. I still have “cousins” whose only blood relation are three or four generations back. Just like you I get a lot of respect because I am the oldest son of the oldest son and thus a family patriarch in waiting. Even my elder cousins among my maternal cousins address me respectfully due to that status.

More on topic, if memory serves me right such systems of address are prevalent throughout East Asia and the Indian subcontinent albeit not necessarily as intricate as the Vietnamese and Chinese have seen fit to inflict on ourselves apparently.