A note on some Murut kinship terms
A short note by Rodney Needham presenting kinship terms recorded among the Lun Daya (upper Sesayap, British North Borneo) to supplement his earlier 1953 note on Murut kinship terminologies.
Summary
Needham reports a set of kinship terms collected by the late Mr Presswood of the Christian Missionary Alliance at Long Berang before World War II, transmitted via Dr L. Onvlee of the Netherlands Bible Society. The terms confirm that among the Lun Daya no distinction is made between parallel- and cross-cousins, no distinction is drawn between parent’s siblings, and no reciprocal term exists between parent’s sibling and sibling’s child (p. 160). The term kinakak kedua for cousin is consistent with neighbouring Bornean usages, and iban is confirmed as the reciprocal term between parent- and child-in-law (p. 160).
Needham uses the data to support an ethnic delimitation placing the Sarawak Murut (Lun Bawang and Lun Daya) as the northernmost members of the middle-Borneo “Kenyah-Kayan-Kajang” group, distinct from the North Borneo “Murut” (Tagal) who belong to Adriani’s Philippine language-group (p. 161). He concludes that the term “Murut” has been used for 150 years without adequate ethnographic grounding and suggests it should be abandoned altogether (p. 161).