Relations

By Volodymyr Kish

 
We had dinner this past weekend with a couple of our long time kumy (roughly pronounced like koomeh), and it struck me that there really is no equivalent term in English for that relationship between a parent couple and the corresponding adults who happen to be godparents of one of their children.  The term godfather or godmother refers strictly to the relationship between that individual and the child whose baptism created that relationship.  There is no explicit term in English for the relationship between the parents and the godparents that corresponds to the Ukrainian term kumy.

Of course in Ukrainian culture, the kumy relationship is taken far more seriously than what North American culture is used to. Your kumy are typically considered to be virtually a part of your family and form the basis of not only strong permanent friendships, but also play a significant role in the various rituals surrounding the child’s progress through youth, adulthood and marriage.

There are many other formal distinctive terms for relationships, usually resulting from marriage, which do not have equivalents in English or many other non-Slavic languages.  For example, the parents of one’s spouse in Ukrainian are known as svekor and svekrukha. One could argue that this is equivalent to father-in-law and mother-in-law in English. However, these terms are derivatives from father and mother and are not distinctive in their own right.  To me that would imply a diminished importance in terms of the status of those relationships.  The reciprocal terms for the derivative terms daughter-in-law or son-in-law, also have distinctive Ukrainian forms – nevistka and zyat’. Similarly, there are distinctive terms for brother-in-law and sister-in-law in Ukrainian – shwager and shwagrova. 

Interestingly enough, there is an important English familial term for which there is no distinctive Ukrainian form, namely the word parent.  We have Ukrainian words for mother and father (maty and bat’ko), but not for the collective word encompassing both.  Often the term bat’ky is used, however, it is obvious that this is derived from the word for father, indicating that Ukrainian family culture was very patrimonial.

Growing up in an immigrant Ukrainian home, there was also one other special relationship that I became familiar with that held great importance to my parents, and it was not one derived from Ukrainian history or traditions, but from the very fact of their displaced condition.  The relationship was known by the terms krayan or selchan, and essentially meant that this person came from the same original village in Ukraine where my parents came from.

One needs to understand that most of our immigrant parents wound up half way around the world from their ancestral home not by choice, but by events and circumstances over which they had little control – war, famine, poverty and exile. Often, they left while still quite young and under traumatic conditions, creating a strong degree of homesickness that we can only imagine.  Thus, when they met up in their new homeland with someone from the same village or general vicinity, it was like finding a long-lost brother or sister, and it usually became the foundation for a strong and long lasting friendship.

While one should be careful about making sweeping generalizations, I am inclined to believe that because Ukrainian history has been so particularly harsh on Ukrainians, as a people they tend to attach more importance and value relationships perhaps a little more than other cultures.  When you are faced with constant threats and instability, having relations you can count on becomes especially important.