English gets by with a handful of family words — aunt, uncle, cousin, grandma. Korean is precise where English is vague: the word for a relative tells you which side of the family they are on, and often their position in it. For descendants of adoptees these words can carry an odd charge — a detailed map of a territory your family could not fully chart. Learning them anyway is worthwhile, and it is allowed.
The everyday core: 엄마 (eomma) and 아빠 (appa) are mom and dad; 어머니 (eomeoni) and 아버지 (abeoji) the formal mother and father. 할머니 (halmeoni) is grandmother, 할아버지 (harabeoji) grandfather — with 외 (oe) in front, 외할머니 and 외할아버지, they mean specifically your mother’s parents. 가족 (gajok) is family.
Aunts and uncles, by side: your mother’s sister is 이모 (imo); your father’s sister is 고모 (gomo); their husbands are 이모부 and 고모부. Your mother’s brother is 외삼촌 (oe-samchon); 삼촌 (samchon) is the general-purpose uncle. The word itself tells everyone at the table exactly how you are related — which is the charm and the point.
Siblings depend on who is speaking: an older sister is 언니 (eonni) to a girl and 누나 (nuna) to a boy; an older brother is 오빠 (oppa) to a girl and 형 (hyeong) to a boy. A younger sibling of either kind is 동생 (dongsaeng). If you know any Korean words at all from dramas or K-pop, it is probably these.
사촌 means “four degrees” — the word for cousin is literally a measurement of distance.
The system underneath is called 촌수 (chonsu), counting degrees of kinship: one 촌 between parent and child, two between siblings, three to an aunt or uncle, four to a cousin — which is why cousin is 사촌 (sachon), “four chon”. It is a way of thinking about family as a lattice of exact distances, and once you see it, the vocabulary stops feeling arbitrary.
A note for this community in particular: these words historically encode a bloodline-centred view of family — the 외 that marks the maternal side literally means “outside”. Adoption sits awkwardly in that older frame, and modern Korean families bend these words all the time: titles like 이모 are warmly used for close family friends who are no blood relation at all. Which means the vocabulary is more flexible than its history — and if there is a 할머니 in your family’s story, found or imagined, the word is yours to use. Pronunciations above are approximate; any language app or the resources on our Resources page will give you the sounds properly.