The Most Important Family Terms In Spanish

• The article explains essential Spanish family vocabulary and highlights gendered nouns: singular terms use masculine or feminine, but mixed-gender groups default to the masculine (e.g., los hermanos, los padres).

• It provides core terms for immediate and extended family across generations, including madre/padre, hijos, abuelos, nietos, tío/tía, and primo/prima.

• Context tips note when and why you’d use these words in real-life situations (host families, dating conversations), emphasizing practical communication about family relationships.

The family — for better or for worse, it’s one of the core units of the human condition. For most people, their family members are the people who raised them, changed their diapers, wiped away their tears (if they weren’t causing them), and witnessed them at their absolute best and worst moments. Whatever your relationship with your family, you can’t escape them; that’s why if you’re studying Spanish, learning to talk about your family in Spanish is an invaluable skill.

Perhaps you’re going to live with a host family in the Spanish-speaking world, or maybe you’re on a date with a native Spanish speaker and your conversation has made it past simple things like where you’re from and into the ins and outs of your personal lives. Keep reading to find out all the expressions you need to know to talk about family in Spanish.

The Spanish Family Tree

Let’s start with a look at the family tree, with a helpful diagram showing our relations. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, after all (though that phrase may be more apt for talking about Spanish fruits and vegetables).

Terms For Talking About Family In Spanish

When you’re talking about family in Spanish, one important note to remember is that Spanish is a gendered language, meaning each noun is classified as either male or female. When you’re talking about family relationships in Spanish, you’re talking about people, so figuring out which gender to use is very straightforward; your sister is female (la hermana), and your brother is male (el hermano), for example. But when you’re talking about a group of people that includes males, Spanish defaults to the male gender, even if there’s only one male in the entire group.

That means the word for “siblings” is los hermanos, unless the group of siblings is all female, in which case you’d use las hermanas. Same thing goes for los padres (“parents”), los hijos (“children”) and almost every other word on this list. It may be an antiquated linguistic rule that reinforces the patriarchy, but it’s the way Spanish speakers use their own language, so it’s worth remembering.

family — la familia [la fah-MEE-lya]

relatives — los parientes [los pah-RYEN-tes]

immediate family — la familia directa [la fah-MEE-lya dee-REK-tah]

extended family — los parientes lejanos [los pah-RYEN-tes leh-HAH-nos]

mother — la madre [la MAH-dreh]

father — el padre [el PAH-dreh]

parents — los padres [los PAH-dres]

sister — la hermana [la ehr-MAH-nah]

brother — el hermano [el ehr-MAH-noh]

siblings — los hermanos [los ehr-MAH-nos]

daughter — la hija [la EE-hah]

son — el hijo [el EE-hoh]

children — los hijos [los EE-hos]

grandmother — la abuela [la ah-BWEL-ah]

grandfather — el abuelo [el ah-BWEL-oh]

grandparents — los abuelos [los ah-BWEL-os]

granddaughter — la nieta [la NYEH-tah]

grandson — el nieto [el NYEH-toh]

grandchildren — los nietos [los NYEH-tos]

aunt — la tía [la TEE-ah]

uncle — el tío [el TEE-oh]

cousin (male) — el primo [el PREE-moh]

cousin (female) — la prima [la PREE-mah]