摘要
The writer of this paper employs teknonymy to explain the overriding of goneration principle in designating mother's brother and wife's brother by the same term "chiu" and father's sister and husband's sister by "ku", and tekeisonymy or reverse teknonymy to explain the anomalous designations of father's older brother and husband's older brother by the same term "po", father's younger brother and husband's younger brother by "shu", and mother's sister and wife's sister by "I".
In the ancient time the generation of these relatives were clearly differentiated by distinct terms, which, however, were gradually merged into each other during the last few centuries of the first millennium B. C. and nearly the whole of the first millennium A. D. By analyzing the principles which underlie, and tracing the historical development of social organizations which influence, the kinship system, the writer remarks that the archaeic Chinese kinship system seems to have been a generation type which originates the ancient bifurcate merging type, where from came the modern bifurcate collateral type in Lowie's terminology, and that at the present day there are indications of new trends in the transformation of the modern Chinese kinship system from its bifurcate collateral to a lineal type. The generation type of kinship system correlates most probably with the primitive hunting band; the bifurcate merging, the exogamous clan; the bifurcate Collateral, the Grossfamilie; and the lineal, the family organization respectively.