nevo

The trap is real, and this band hands it to you on a plate. Nevo is a nephew: the son of your brother or sister. Nepo is a grandson: the son of your son or daughter. One letter apart, both kinship terms, both in this chapter, and mixing them up rearranges a family tree. Say it plainly and learn it once: nevo is a nephew, nepo is a grandson. The English spelling is the cue - nephew has the same soft consonant as nevo, while nepo keeps the hard p that nepotism also keeps.

It is not your fault, and here is why. Latin nepos meant both. It covered the grandson and the sister's son without distinction, because in a Roman household the two often stood in the same relation to you. Every modern European language then split the word in two, and Esperanto took one half from Latin directly (nepo, grandson) and the other half from French and German (nevo, nephew, from neveu and Neffe). So the two Esperanto words are the same Latin word arriving twice by different roads, and they still look like each other because they are each other. English did the same thing with nephew and nepotism: the cardinals who handed offices to their nepotes were being generous to nephews, grandsons and, discreetly, to sons.

The rest of the family, built as usual. Nevino is a niece, nepino a granddaughter, genevoj your nephews and nieces together. The uncle and aunt on the other side of the relationship are onklo and onklino, and the cousins are kuzo and kuzino. Esperanto's kinship system is one of its clearest wins: learn six roots and the -in-, -ge- and -bo- affixes, and the whole tree falls out, including bonevo for a nephew by marriage.