The meaning of kinship and family

I never gave much thought to the meaning of kinship and family. Today the word family is my focus. What does family mean?

I'm looking for the origin of family and my search starts with the word kinship.

With kinship I find terms like blood related and affinity between lovers who bond in marriage or in close association. Breaking down the term into it's roots might help to understand the word kinship.

Kin is more correlated to family than kinship. Kin is a root word and relates to the connection of blood and of genetic substance. It also refers to the connection of people who share close ties or similar ideas and responsibilities.

With the root word kin you get kinship, kinsmen, kinswomen, kinfolk, kindred, kindly, king, kingdom. But not Kong !!!!! You also have akin which is a derivative of something similar and kindle which means to bring forth.

My search led me to the Merriam Webster online dictionary where I found a reasonable explanation of the evolution of words leading to kin.

There it states that cynn was an Old English word which likely came from the Old Germanic term chunni. The old Germanic tribes originally spoke Latin and they adapted chunni from the Latin term gignere which means to beget or to bring forth ( kindle ). Now the Latin language evolved from the age of the legendary wars between Romulus and Remus where Rome was born. This was a transitional period where the Greek Empire met up with the forces that would later see them lose there superpower status. The Romans and their Latin adapted gignere from the Greek term gignesthai which to the Greeks meant to be born.

Kin according to Merriam Webster started being used in the 12th century.

Synonyms of kin include:

1. descendant
2. ancestor
3. nobility
4. relative
5. family
6. servant

When was the word family introduced into the English language ?

Again Merriam Webster comes in handy. In the 15th century AD, 300 years after the word kin became a part of the Old English language the word family became familiar. It started out as familie. In the Roman Latin world the word famulus referred to a servant. The word familia referred to the household and included the famulus and the blood relatives and other nobles.

So there is only one thing left to know before I understand the meaning of kinship and family.

When did familie become family ?

In the Evolution of English by George Boeree we find that the modern English language is a bastard tongue that is a mixture of many languages.

The first English dictionary was published " for the benefit of Ladies, Gentlewoman, and other unskilled folk" by a word guy called Robert Cawdrey back in 1604. It contained 2543 words and was named Table Alphabeticall. In the Cawdrey dictionary words like geometry are labelled with the ie ending - geometrie.

By 1828 when the first webster dictionary was published the work family was in use.

This is how it is defined in that dictionary.

FAM''ILY, n. [L. familia.]

1. The collective body of persons who live in one house and under one head or manager; a household, including parents, children and servants, and as the case may be, lodgers or boarders.

2. Those who descend from one common progenitor; a tribe or race; kindred; lineage. Thus the Israelites were a branch of the family of Abraham; and the descendants of Reuben, of Manasseh, &c., were called their families. The whole human race are the family of Adam, the human family.

3. Course of descent; genealogy; line of ancestors.

Go and complain thy family is young.

4. Honorable descent; noble or respectable stock. He is a man of family.

5. A collection or union of nations or states.

The states of Europe were, by the prevailing maxims of its policy, closely united in one family.

6. In popular language, an order, class or genus of animals or of other natural productions, having something in common, by which they are distinguished from others; as, quadrupeds constitute a family of animals, and we speak of the family or families of plants.

From this 1828 version we see the Religious influence behind the work. The Webster word guy assumes that the whole human race are the family of Adam. This, to me, shows the power of words and the ability to use these symbols in propaganda.

Maybe we are and maybe we ain't.......the meaning of kinship and family is an opinion that is defined differently by the interpreter. The written word is a record that is more easily passed on therefore more capable of inscribing itself in the human psyche or the "hug" than simple word of mouth ever could.

Wanting to finish this I can only say that Plato was a lexicon expert who recorded Greek words. Homer and Hesiod who came much earlier were not so fortunate. We know much more of Plato than we do of the mythological poets who a"muse"d those who would hear their word of mouth.

What exactly did those poets know of poiesis ?

Now I have a better understanding of the meaning of kinship and family ?

Philosophically speaking I know very little of the love and bonding warmth of family.