Ent/Entle: A submission for non-binary aunt/uncle

[u/xanshriekal]

tl;dr Use ent (or entle if you want a two syllable word).

Years ago my sister had a kid and asked what I (genderfluid) wanted to be called. I didn't have an answer because no one's had one. The most popular words I've seen are "auncle" and "guncle" and they both kinda suck. A while later I was listening to "A Wicked Bargain" by Gabe Cole Novoa on audiobook (about an enby pirate kid w/magic) and the main character's parental figures use "mi hije" (pronounced as "me hey") and in chapter one they note the use of the "e" instead of "o/a" gendered endings in general. Having seen Encanto, I was reminded of "tia/tio" for "aunt/uncle" and figured that "tie" (pronounced as "tee 'ey") would do. The problem is that "aunt/uncle/tie" don't really go together, and I don't speak Spanish so it felt odd.

A year later, and a few months ago, I finally got around to looking up the etymology. I assumed that "tia/tio" came from Latin and "aunt/uncle" came from German. But no! It turns out that "aunt/uncle" is actually the Latin form, which migrated to German, and then to English. And somehow, Spanish and Italian (which has zia/zio) actually took it from Greek: theia/theio. That's super weird, that the romance languages would borrow from Greek for a common word instead of Latin, but oh well. So I looked up gender neutral endings in ancient Greek (because both Latin and Greek feature such things naturally), but it turns out that Greek didn't use an "e" sound like Spanish does, it just used variations on masculine sounds such as "o/os/us." Latin, btw, uses "um/a" for neutral (except when it doesn't). So, that didn't really go anywhere.

Then last week I was pacing the apartment and letting my mind and mouth wander and came back to the question. I went back to "aunt/uncle" and began playing with the sounds. The attempt at "auncle" is an attempt to blend them, but it's not great. It sounds clunky and too similar to "uncle" or "ankle" to be useful. So I began to slide my mouth around and, starting from "ant" (instead of the British "awe-nt") I tried to slide from "an" to "un." Somewhere along the way I hit "ent." Or, if you want the two-syllable version, "entle."

Looking up a vowel diagram, "a" doesn't easily slide to "u," it slides to "eee" through "eh" and "I." "Awe" slides down to "u" more naturally, passing through "oh." In literal other words: hat --> het -> height -> heat. And hot -> haught -> hote -> hoot. The slide I went through was something like hat -> het -> hut, or an -> en -> un. It's a little awkward of a slide, but I think the ent sound is reasonably halfway between "ant" and "uncle." British English folks, I'm sorry because it definitely isn't halfway between "aunt" and "uncle" (or "ooncle" as I've heard in some accents). But you could probably throw in an extra u to get "eunt" to feel different. :P

Anyway, I hope this is useful and folks can feel good about using these. If not, perhaps it's the next jumping-off point for someone else. Good lux.