Description:

The term 'sepu' means 'cousin', i.e., children of one's aunt or uncle. It is commonly applied to cousins at a certain remove as well, if the relationship is known. Unlike many other family terms in Common it does not encode rank based on relative birth order or birth order relative to one's parents. It is also very rarely used with a gender modifier and almost never with a gender prefix.

'Sepu' has a very egalitarian tone. It can be used as a polite address head term - as such, it is a polite address and it implies a friendly, equal relation.

There is a system of genealogical terms that goes into detail about how to refer to most distant cousins. At a very simply level, an ordinal number may be used with 'sepu', e.g., 'kawas sepu', 'second cousin'. This works much like in English.