Family Members in Arabic: 12 Useful Words

01Begin with four relationships

• These words name relationships; they do not yet include “my.” Father and my father are different forms.
• Learn each pair together: father and mother, brother and sister. Then recall one word without looking at its partner.
• The reading aids use plain Latin letters. Listen to Arabic audio as well, especially for sounds that English spelling cannot show accurately.

02Which side of the family?

English can use uncle or aunt for either side. For these Arabic words, first identify the parent, then the relationship. Your mother’s brother is khal; your father’s brother is amm.

These four labels describe the parent’s own siblings. Other family connections, including relatives by marriage, need more specific wording. To keep the four words clear, place each aunt or uncle beside the matching parent on a simple family map.

03Add grandparents and children

• Jadd and jadda can refer to grandparents on either side. These words alone do not specify your mother’s or father’s family.
• Ibn means son. Bint means daughter and can also mean girl; the surrounding sentence tells you which meaning fits.
• Describe the relationship from one person’s point of view. Someone can be a daughter to a parent and a sister to a sibling.

04Change brother to my brother

• The attached ending expresses “my.” It belongs to the noun rather than being a separate word before it.
• Learn these four complete forms. Father and brother have grammatical details that a simple add-a-letter rule would miss.
• The speaker can be a man or a woman: akhi still means my brother. The relationship word describes the family member.

05Make a short introduction

Use hadha for the male relative and hadhihi for the female relative in these examples. Arabic does not need a separate present-tense word for “is” here.

Try an introduction that suits your own family, or use an imaginary family for practice. If you forget a relationship, work out whose relative you mean before checking its Arabic name.