אַחְיָן

The word "אַחְיָן" (achyan), which was adopted in modern Hebrew to denote "nephew," developed from a semantic shift of a biblical proper name. Originally, the word appears in 1 Chronicles (7:19) as the name of one of the descendants of Menashe: "And the sons of Shemida were: Ahian, and Shechem, and Likhi, and Aniam." In the early 20th century, as part of the process of Hebrew revival, there was a need to establish a Hebrew term for the concept of "nephew," as there was no accepted term for this in biblical or Mishnaic Hebrew. In 1932, Daniel Persky, a linguistic editor and linguist, proposed in the newspaper "Haaretz" to use the word "אַחְיָן" (achyan) in this sense, probably because of the clear connection between the word and the root a-ch-y (אח"י, brother). Despite the fact that at that time there were other proposals for this term, including "נִין" (nin, proposed by Yehuda Gur and Yitzhak Avineri) and "נֶכְדָּן" (nechdan, established by the Hebrew Language Committee in 1943), in the 1950s the word "אחיין" (achyan) became established in Hebrew usage to denote "nephew" and "אחיינית" (achyanit) to denote "niece." Interestingly, the words "נָצִיב" (natziv) and "נְצִיבָה" (netzivah) were used during the British Mandate period to indicate nephew and niece in the first degree, i.e., children of a brother, but their use in this context has completely ceased.