In Hindi, chacha is your father's younger brother, mama is your mother's brother, and bua is your father's sister — three different people that English files under just two words, "uncle" and "aunt." Hindi has a specific name for nearly every relative in the family, and the whole system runs on three questions: whose side of the family, older or younger, related by blood or by marriage. Answer those and the word almost builds itself. This guide maps the full tree — father's side, mother's side, siblings and cousins, and the in-law system — in tables you can actually learn from.
Why Hindi bothers with all these words
English optimises for brevity: one word, "aunt," covers your mother's sister, your father's sister, and the wives of two different uncles. Hindi optimises for information. When someone says "meri bua aa rahi hai" ("my bua is coming"), everyone in the room knows instantly which side of the family she's from and roughly what her arrival means for the weekend. The word carries the map.
For you, the learner, this specificity is a gift in one particular way: using the right word is among the fastest signals of belonging available in the language. As I put it in the guide to learning Hindi for your partner's family: call your partner's mum's sister "Renu mausi" instead of "your aunt Renu," and you've just told her you're family. That guide gives the idea one paragraph. This post is the paragraph grown into the full map.
The three questions that build every word
- Which side? Father's side and mother's side use entirely different words. This is the big one, and the one English speakers likely find strangest at first.
- Older or younger? On the father's side, his older brother and younger brother get different words (tau vs chacha).
- Blood or marriage? Each blood relative's spouse gets a paired word — usually the feminine form of the same root. Chacha's wife is chachi. Mama's wife is mami.
Notice the pairing pattern while you're there: -a endings are generally the men, -i endings generally the women. Dada and dadi, nana and nani, chacha and chachi, mama and mami. Once you see it, half of the tables below memorise themselves.
Father's side
| Word | Who it is | Say it like |
|---|---|---|
| dada | grandfather (father's father) | daa-daa |
| dadi | grandmother (father's mother) | daa-dee |
| tau (also taya) | father's older brother | taa-oo |
| tai | tau's wife | taa-ee |
| chacha | father's younger brother | chaa-chaa |
| chachi | chacha's wife | chaa-chee |
| bua | father's sister | boo-aa |
| phupha | bua's husband | phoo-phaa |
The grandparent words are likely the first ones you'll need, because grandparents get talked about constantly. And a note on phupha: that ph is an aspirated p — a p with a puff of breath, not an English f. If aspiration is new territory, it's the same family of sounds covered in the introduction guide, and it's worth five minutes of practice, because bua will absolutely notice when you get her husband's title right.
Mother's side
| Word | Who it is | Say it like |
|---|---|---|
| nana | grandfather (mother's father) | naa-naa |
| nani | grandmother (mother's mother) | naa-nee |
| mama | mother's brother (older or younger) | maa-maa |
| mami | mama's wife | maa-mee |
| mausi | mother's sister | mau-see ("mau" rhymes with "now") |
| mausa | mausi's husband | mau-saa |
Two traps here. First: mama has nothing to do with the English word for mum. It's your mother's brother — an uncle — pronounced with two long, even syllables. If you address your mother-in-law as mama, you have just called her your wife's uncle, and the story will be retold at every gathering for a decade. Second: notice the older/younger distinction from the father's side mostly disappears here — mama covers all of your mother's brothers regardless of age. One common explanation is that households were traditionally organised around the father's side, so that side needed finer-grained words; whatever the history, the asymmetry is real and it works in your favour. The mother's side is easier.
Siblings, cousins, and the word that doesn't exist
The basics: bhai ("brother"), behen ("sister"). Older siblings attract respect terms of their own: an older brother is bhaiya, an older sister is didi — and you'll hear both used well beyond the family, for the same reason "aunty" escapes the family (more on that below).
Now the gap that tells you the most about the culture: everyday Hindi has no common word for "cousin." Your chacha's daughter is your behen. Your mausi's son is your bhai. When precision is genuinely needed, Hinglish steps in and people say "cousin-brother" and "cousin-sister" — a phrase that sounds odd in English and is completely standard across Indian English and Hinglish. The language reflects how many families, mine included, actually run: cousins grow up in and out of each other's houses, closer to siblings than to the once-a-year cousins an English childhood likely involves.
Going down a generation: beta ("son") and beti ("daughter") — though both have escaped their dictionary definitions, and any aunty may warmly call you beta regardless of whose child you are. It's affection, not confusion. More precisely: bhatija / bhatiji (brother's son / daughter) and bhanja / bhanji (sister's son / daughter) — file these under "recognise, don't memorise."
The in-law system
Marrying into a Hindi-speaking family comes with its own full vocabulary. The core set:
| Word | Who it is |
|---|---|
| saas | mother-in-law |
| sasur | father-in-law |
| sasural | your in-laws' home (a place, and a whole concept) |
| devar | husband's younger brother |
| jeth | husband's older brother |
| nanad | husband's sister |
| saala | wife's brother |
| saali | wife's sister |
| jija | sister's husband |
| bhabhi | brother's wife |
| damaad | son-in-law (this is you, if you married in) |
| bahu | daughter-in-law (also you, if you married in) |
One word here needs a safety label: saala. Within the family, said straight, it's a perfectly normal relation word — your wife's brother. Outside the family, it's one of Hindi's most common mild swears, roughly "that rascal," and the insult logic runs through the implication about the man's sister. Context is everything: at a wedding, "mera saala" ("my brother-in-law") is a fond introduction; muttered at traffic, the same word is something else entirely. You'll hear both within your first month around Hindi speakers. Recognise it, enjoy it, and let a native speaker handle the muttering.
The practical in-law question — what do you actually call your partner's parents to their faces? Before marriage, likely "aunty" and "uncle." After marriage, many people shift to whatever their partner says — often "mummy" and "papa" — but families vary a lot on this, and the safest move is the honest one: ask your partner what their family expects. If a wedding is what's bringing you to this post, the wedding guest guide covers the event itself.
The -ji suffix, and the name-plus-relation trick
Two upgrades that cost almost nothing. First, -ji: a respect particle you attach to a name or title — dadi-ji, mausi-ji, "Sharma-ji." It softens and honours at the same time, and with grandparents-in-law it's rarely wrong. Second, the name-plus-relation pattern: Hindi speakers routinely say the person's name and their relation together — "Renu mausi," "Vikram chacha." Learn the six or eight combinations that exist in your partner's actual family and use them whole, like names, because that's what they are. The moment you ask "is Priya mausi coming?" instead of "is your aunt coming?", something shifts in how the room hears you.
Everyone else is aunty or uncle
Beyond the actual family tree, there's a second system, and it's much simpler: any adult of roughly your parents' generation is "aunty" or "uncle." Neighbours, family friends, your partner's childhood dentist. This isn't a claim of relation, it's baseline respect and warmth, and it means half the "aunties" at any gathering aren't relatives at all. The etiquette that follows: the specific words in the tables above are for people who genuinely hold those positions; for everyone else, plain "aunty" and "uncle" are exactly right, and promoting a family friend to "mausi-ji" on first meeting reads as odd rather than warm.
Don't memorise the tree — memorise your partner's version
The full system is big. Your partner's actual family is small. So skip the flashcard deck of forty kinship terms and do this instead: sit down with your partner and list the people you'll genuinely meet this year — chances are it's six to ten names. For each, get the relation word and the name-plus-relation combination, and say each one out loud a few times, because the long vowels are load-bearing: chaa-chaa with both syllables stretched, not a clipped "chuh-chuh." This is exactly the kind of drilling Hinglish Vinglish is built for — say the word, and Ellie, the app's saffron-orange elephant coach, scores your pronunciation and tells you which sound to fix. Then deploy one per visit. The tables here will still exist when the extended family shows up; the 100 most common Hindi phrases covers what to say to them once you've got their titles right.
FAQ
What is the difference between chacha and mama?
Both translate to "uncle," but they're different people: chacha is your father's younger brother, mama is your mother's brother. Hindi kinship words always encode which side of the family the relative is on, which is why one English word maps to several Hindi ones.
What does bua mean in Hindi?
Bua is your father's sister. Her husband is phupha. Your mother's sister is a different word entirely — mausi — and mausi's husband is mausa.
What is the Hindi word for cousin?
Everyday Hindi doesn't have one. Cousins are called bhai ("brother") and behen ("sister"), the same as siblings. When people need to be precise, they use the Hinglish phrases "cousin-brother" and "cousin-sister," which are standard across Indian English.
What do you call your mother-in-law in Hindi?
The relation word is saas, but that's how you refer to her, not how you address her. To her face: likely "aunty" before marriage, and after marriage often whatever your partner uses, commonly "mummy." Families vary, so ask your partner what theirs expects.
Why is saala considered rude?
Saala literally means "wife's brother" and is a normal family word in that context. As a swear aimed at a stranger, it works by implication — calling someone your saala implies a claim about his sister — and over time it's settled into a general-purpose mild insult, roughly "rascal." Tone and context decide which one it is.
What does adding -ji to a word mean?
-ji is a respect particle. Attached to a name or a relation word — dadi-ji, mausi-ji — it adds politeness and warmth at the same time. Use it freely with elders; it's very hard to offend anyone with a -ji.
Got the titles down and want the conversations that follow? Hinglish Vinglish teaches spoken Hinglish with voice-first lessons and pronunciation feedback from Ellie — free to start, one-time unlock, no subscription. Download on iOS, get it on Android, or start with the guide to Hindi for your partner's family.
— Akhil Madan, founder of Keeda Studios. Writing this post is the first time I've seen my whole family laid out in one set of tables, and honestly, it explains a lot.