serkkuja

Serkkuja is the plural form of the Finnish word serkku, which refers to a cousin. A serkku is typically understood as a child of one’s aunt or uncle and is part of the extended family.

In everyday Finnish, serkkuja is used to talk about more than one cousin. The word can appear in sentences such as “Meillä on paljon serkkuja,” meaning “We have many cousins.” The form serkkuja also appears as the partitive plural, for example in phrases where a part of the family is being discussed or quantified, such as “minulla on serkkuja” (I have cousins).

Finnish kinship terms do not always distinguish by generation in the same way as some languages, but common distinctions can be clarified with phrases like “ensimmäinen serkku” for a first cousin when needed. In context, serkkuja typically denotes siblings of one’s parents’ other siblings’ children or more distant cousins within the same extended family network.

Serkkuja is used across different dialects of Finnish and appears in everyday language, family conversations, and informal writing. It reflects the Finnish emphasis on close-knit extended families while accommodating the flexible and evolving nature of kinship terms in modern usage.

See also: serkku, perhe, suku.