Relation guide

Family relation names in Urdu: a complete guide

English has one word, uncle, for four different people. Urdu and Hindi give each of them a name — and the name tells you exactly how you are related. This guide explains the everyday relation words used in Pakistani and Indian families, with their English meaning, and how Shajra uses them.

Parents and grandparents

The closest relations are the same on both sides of the family, but grandparents are not. Your father's parents and your mother's parents have different names, so a single word tells you which side of the family someone is from.

Your father's side (dadyal)

Your father's family is called the dadyal. His brothers and sisters, and the people they married, each have their own word.

Some families use Taya for the father's elder brother and Chacha only for his younger brothers; others say Chachu for all of them. Shajra uses Chachu for every brother of your father, and you can always add a nickname such as “Bare Abbu” to a profile.

Your mother's side (nanihal)

Your mother's family is your nanihal. The words are completely different from the father's side, so “Mamu” and “Chachu” never get confused.

Cousins

In English every cousin is just a cousin. In Urdu the word says whose child they are, by adding -zad (“born of”) to the parent's relation word, followed by Bhai (brother) or Behan (sister).

Many families simply call cousins Bhai and Behan in conversation. The -zad words are useful precisely when you need to be exact — for example when explaining the family to a new member or recording it in a tree.

Nephews and nieces

Your brother's children and your sister's children also have different names.

Notice the pattern: you are a Chachu or Phuphi to your Bhatija, and a Mamu or Khala to your Bhanja. The two words always come as a pair.

Grandchildren

Again the pair matches: you are Dada or Dadi to your Pota, and Nana or Nani to your Nawasa.

In-laws (susral)

Marriage brings a whole new family — the susral. Some words depend on whether you are the husband or the wife.

How Shajra works out these names

You never have to type “Chachazad” into Shajra. The app only stores the basic facts of a family — who is whose parent, who is married to whom, and who are brothers and sisters. Everything else is worked out by following the tree from your profile:

1. Your father's brother is found by going up to your father, then across to his brother — so Shajra shows Chachu.
2. Go one step further down to that brother's daughter, and she becomes your Chachazad Behan.
3. Open the same tree from your son's profile and the same man is shown as Dada's brother, because the path is different.

When you add a relative you can pick the everyday word directly — add your Mamu, your Nani or your Bhabhi — and Shajra places them in the right spot, filling in anyone missing in between. It also keeps the tree sensible: nobody gets two fathers or two mothers, and a wife added later automatically becomes the mother of her husband's children.