נִין

The word "נִין" (nin) appears in the Bible three times, always in the phrase "nin vanekhed," for example in Isaiah 14:22: "And I will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, nin vanekhed." The meaning of this phrase in the biblical context is apparently "descendant" in general. This is also how the ancient translators of the Bible understood it: in the Septuagint Greek translation, the phrase is translated with words meaning "seed and name," and in later Aramaic translations with words meaning "sons and sons of sons." Similarly, in the Gaonic period, the phrase seems to have been understood as referring to descendants in general, as can be seen from a letter written by Joseph ben Abitur to Rabbi Samuel Gaon in 989, in which he calls him "grandson of priests, and nin of Geonim." However, already at that time, the word "נכד" (nekhed) began to take on a more specific meaning, when Menahem ben Saruq defined it in his dictionary "HaMachberet" (10th century) as "sons of sons," and thus its meaning was established in the Middle Ages. In contrast, the word "nin" was not widely used during that period. In the early 20th century, with the revival of Hebrew, there were various attempts to define the word: Yehuda Gur in his dictionary (1903) defined it as "descendant," and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in his dictionary from the same year as "grandson" and also as "son of the grandson." In 1927, Gur defined "nin" also as "son of the brother," and following him, the newspaper "Haaretz" began to use the word in this sense. During that period, there were other suggestions for the title of nephew, such as "אַחְיָן" (achyan, based on a name in Chronicles) or "נֶכְדָּן" (nekdan, as established by the Hebrew Language Committee). Nevertheless, in the 1950s, the word "אחיין" (achyan) was accepted as the Hebrew word for "nephew," while the word "nin" - despite the objections of linguists - was established in the meaning of "great-grandchild."