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How to refer to specific wives? ...and other polygamy etiquette...

One downside of using co-wife is that if you forget the hyphen the eye can see it as cow-wife, which of course is not flattering at all.

Seriously though, Ginny brings out a great point about a woman's need to be honored as "wife." That's one of the hardest parts of current marriage laws (especially in areas which have "proports to be" married statutes) -- that you can't legally use the term wife in reference to any subsequent woman without divorce entering into the picture. Otherwise it would be easy to co-opt terms such as "life partner" and the like - which mean essentially the same thing - but subtly demean subsequent wives.
 
FollowingHim said:
There is none. Proper etiquette is to be monogamous. :D

Once we've broken that "rule", we're making things up as we go along. Our culture has abandoned this for so long that there is no longer an established etiquette around it at all.
As far as I'm concerned, every option you have used in your post is acceptable, and have been used multiple times. There's nothing offensive about the 1st wife / 2nd wife terminology - it actually can be useful, as it has a direct bearing on the issues faced by different women. First wives face different challenges to second and subsequent wives, particularly emotionally, and when we're discussing such matters this can actually be a very relevant way to refer to them.
If there is a need for anonymity but you'd like to refer to them by a name that does not carry the baggage of these terms, feel free to use a pseudonym, as you do for yourself in these public posts (we've all got pseudonyms here in the form of our usernames, and use them more commonly than real names in public conversations).
Or just use their names. Or just say your wife. Whatever works within the context.

Once somebody posted a video on Facebook entitled "when your wife accepts your side bitch", of a black lady talking about how she had accepted her husband's mistress and was going out of her way to be nice to her. I responded "My bitch would accept a side wife". Which my wife thought was hilarious, and I intended as a humorous reminder of the equality between wives - but many others thought was insulting. Most people don't get my humour, fortunately my wife does... My point is, don't worry too much about the terminology, just relax and say whatever works at the time, don't worry about accidentally saying something "wrong". Because whatever the "rules" are, I just deliberately broke them to make a point, so nothing you do by accident can be worse. :D
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“Grate” response. :p I get your humor too. Should I be afraid? :D:D:)
 
Side note: I assume everyone already knows this but if we were to go back to the places in which the word "wife" is used in scripture in both the Greek and Hebrew we'll find that the term "wife" was contextually inserted by the translators and is biblically synonymous with the word "woman." If thinking from this perspective it makes the terms "sister-woman" and "co-woman" both sound kind of funny.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/search/search.cfm?Criteria=wife OR woman&t=KJV&ss=1 (677 total reference results through 14 pages)

Just click on the Strong's number next to the word to see the underlying information. The consistency you'll see is quite amazing and the exceptions hold interesting insights into the intended nature of male/female relations that further shake the cultural norm of our day.

Here's the male equivalent... https://www.blueletterbible.org/search/search.cfm?Criteria=man+OR+husband&t=KJV&ss=1

This is particularly insightful considering the popularity of using arguments about whose called a "wife" in scripture and who is not.

Just thought I'd toss this in as an example of how dramatically language frames our thinking.
 
Curtis said:
Side note: I assume everyone already knows this but if we were to go back to the places in which the word "wife" is used in scripture in both the Greek and Hebrew we'll find that the term "wife" was contextually inserted by the translators and is biblically synonymous with the word "woman." If thinking from this perspective it makes the terms "sister-woman" and "co-woman" both sound kind of funny.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/search/search.cfm?Criteria=wife OR woman&t=KJV&ss=1 (677 total reference results through 14 pages)

Just click on the Strong's number next to the word to see the underlying information. The consistency you'll see is quite amazing and the exceptions hold interesting insights into the intended nature of male/female relations that further shake the cultural norm of our day.

Here's the male equivalent... https://www.blueletterbible.org/search/search.cfm?Criteria=man+OR+husband&t=KJV&ss=1

This is particularly insightful considering the popularity of using arguments about whose called a "wife" in scripture and who is not.

Just thought I'd toss this in as an example of how dramatically language frames our thinking.
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Blue letter bible is a very good free resource.
Just make sure you always drill down below the strongs definitions if you want to get real meanings of words (they have decent public domain lexicons there).

You're totally right about wife in Hebrew and Greek.
For Husband in Hebrew, the language can choose to be nuanced or use a more specific word בעל Ba'al.
This word is like Master/Husband so still some ambiguity but less. If you asked an ancient Israeli girl "do you have a ba'al?" it's clear it's husband or master if she's a servant girl; either way she's unavailable if she answers 'yes'.

For the guy, if you ask him "do you have an ishah (woman)?" doesn't really matter how he answers ... he's available.
 
IshChayil said:
For Husband in Hebrew, the language can choose to be nuanced or use a more specific word בעל Ba'al.
This word is like Master/Husband so still some ambiguity but less. If you asked an ancient Israeli girl "do you have a ba'al?" it's clear it's husband or master if she's a servant girl; either way she's unavailable if she answers 'yes'.

For the guy, if you ask him "do you have an ishah (woman)?" doesn't really matter how he answers ... he's available.
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Ish, that is really good. Thanks.
 
For us we just call each other by name. In the bedroom we've noticed that Steve mostly calls all of us "Kitten" and that's probably not as bad as it sounds because it's very memorable to be in the middle of things and to be called someone else's name. Outside of the house we go by first names and skip the descriptions except around the church and then I might say, "Hi, I'm Megan, one of Steve's wives." I have noticed a few families where the wives call each other 'sister' and that's kind of nice.
 
Curtis said:
Side note: I assume everyone already knows this but if we were to go back to the places in which the word "wife" is used in scripture in both the Greek and Hebrew we'll find that the term "wife" was contextually inserted by the translators and is biblically synonymous with the word "woman." If thinking from this perspective it makes the terms "sister-woman" and "co-woman" both sound kind of funny.
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It is the same in modern French. "ma femme" means "my wife" or "my woman".
 
cnystrom said:
It is the same in modern French. "ma femme" means "my wife" or "my woman".
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Modern German kinda also. "Frau" just means woman but "Meine Frau" is understood as "my wife".
They developed colloquially a new word for girlfriend Freundin.
 
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IshChayil said:
Modern German kinda also. "Frau" just means woman but "Meine Frau" is understood as "my wife".
They developed colloquially a new word for girlfriend Freundin.
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In Romani, Romni means wife and Chey means Girl/daughter. All other words for woman are borrowed. The distinction is that she is either a wife or she is still a girl in her fathers house.
 
A search for wife in an online Maori dictionary is very interesting, as the first result is murimanu, which means secondary wife...

Basically, Wahine means woman. Hoa wahine means "partner woman", ie wife. Whaereere means mother (interchangeable as another term for wife in the sense of "mother of your children").

But polygamy is at the root of the entire language, all words regarding marriage are describing it in a polygamous context:
Wahine matua means first, chief woman (first wife). Murimanu means secondary wife / concubine.
Kaitamāhine means to seek a wife. Ihupuni means to take a second wife.
 
I find it fun to simply refer to my wife as "female"... For instance, "Female, what is for dinner?." Or, "Female, make me a sandwich." ... I'd encourage all you guys to use this approach and experience how fun it can be! Lol

#pickingonmywife
 
rustywest4 said:
I find it fun to simply refer to my wife as "female"... For instance, "Female, what is for dinner?." Or, "Female, make me a sandwich." ... I'd encourage all you guys to use this approach and experience how fun it can be! Lol

#pickingonmywife
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I think you’d have about as much fun just saying, “Woman, what’s for dinner?” <— NOT recommending this.
 
Kevin said:
I saw that done once. I had fun.
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My only house rule:
"If you're a woman, and you're in the kitchen, and you're pregnant ... then you must be barefoot too"
 
What's better, "woman", or " my old lady"?
 
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