English nicked the word family from familia so we tend to assume that familia describes a family when really it describes something closer to a tribe or a clan. The familia consists of one’s whole immediate and extended family, plus people who have been enslaved, plus formerly enslaved people who have been freed who now have a limited kind of freedom but are still around and share the family name forever, plus any random men who might have been adopted in and also all the dead relatives whose death masks are on the walls and who remain a vital, living part of a familia’s name and reputation
...more
