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The term sister is often used figuratively to refer, for instance, to a “sister company” for a company within the same group, or to a “sister site” for sites that belong to the same family. This connotation as explained by the Cambridge Dictionary means:

  • belonging to a pair or group of similar and related things, such as businesses, usually owned or operated by the same person or organization:
    • our sister company in Australia.

also, from Collins Dictionary:

  • You can use sister to describe something that is of the same type or is connected in some way to another thing you have mentioned.
  • ⇒ ...the International Monetary Fund and its sister organisation, the World Bank. ⇒ ...Voyager 2 and its sister ship, Voyager 1.

This usage appears to be common with things that are regarded as feminine and are associated, as if by kinship, with other similar things that belong to the same group. An early usage example of this is the "sister" referred to ships:

  • the US battleship Missouri and her sister ship, the Wisconsin.

In other instances, the "feminine" issue is less explicit as in the case of internet sites, so I guess this usage has to do with the fact that English is less gender specific when it comes to things or abstract entities.

Questions:

  • Does “sister” apply to whatever entity that belongs to the same group irrespective of its real or perceived gender? or could "brother" be used instead?

  • Where does this usage come from?

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    FWIW, I've never heard brother used like this. And regarding your last line, companies or websites don't sound like particularly feminine things to me. Interesting question, though. +1. – Tushar Raj Jan 24 '17 at 11:14
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    I'll note that in carpentry, when a weak piece of lumber is strengthened by nailing another similar-sized piece to it, this is known as "sistering". – Hot Licks Jan 24 '17 at 12:53
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    In corporate lingo, parent company. For websites, *related* sites. – Lambie Jan 24 '17 at 15:50
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    @Lambie - I (native Br E speaker) see/hear nothing wrong with "ELU is a sister site to Engineering SE". – AndyT Jan 24 '17 at 15:54
  • Personally, I would never use sister *site* though sister organisation is OK. – Lambie Jan 24 '17 at 16:39
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    Could perhaps use "brother site" as tongue-in-cheek thing if the web-sites both were very masculine and aimed towards men... That said, I suspect the reason is to emphasize that the sites are friends and co-operates rather than competing. While it's sexists and mostly a cliche; the relationships between brothers has often been described with a degree of competition and maybe hostility (think Cain and Abel), while that between sisters typically have not. So "brother-sites" may suggest a level of competition to many. – Baard Kopperud Jan 24 '17 at 17:21
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    @Labie - new users are kindly and repeatedly recommended to use our "sister site ELL" for more basic or simple questions. –  Jan 24 '17 at 17:26
  • @Baard Kopperud - interesting, but if that were the case, we would hear "brother site" used in the contexts you are suggesting. – Josh 25 mins ago delete –  Jan 24 '17 at 17:55
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    Possible duplicate of Why use the term "Sister sites" instead of "Brother sites"? – verbose Jan 25 '17 at 02:43
  • "Brother site" is not "grammatically wrong," but most native English speakers would have to guess what it meant. – alephzero Jan 25 '17 at 03:32
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    @verbose: This phrasing is a better-phrased, much more general version of that question. – smci Jan 25 '17 at 11:46
  • @curiousdanni - In what way is this a duplicate? Do I ask the same questions? Do the answers in the old question answer mine? Should CV be applied with more care and attention? –  Jan 25 '17 at 15:33
  • It was user verbose who suggested that this question is a duplicate, so I'm not sure why your comment is chastising curiousdanni, unless he deleted his comment – Mari-Lou A Jan 26 '17 at 11:12
  • @Mari-LouA - he was the first to CV after I changed the title, do you think this is a duplicate? –  Jan 26 '17 at 11:16
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    Wow 2nd CV... No, it's not a duplicate. Some users don't know how to use their time productively, and look to criticise or nag whenever possible. The answers on the older question do not answer your question, if anything the older Q could be closed as being off topic for lack of research. – Mari-Lou A Jan 26 '17 at 11:21
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    Besides the older question is asking ONLY about sister sites, and WHY. Your question is more detailed, contains research, and is asking for the origin and USAGE of "sister" in other compounds. Big difference. – Mari-Lou A Jan 26 '17 at 11:27
  • I was told by my Latin teacher back in the day that the reason ships are called "she" is because the Latin word for ship has a feminine gender. Does anyone know if this is considered valid? If all the examples here with "sister ____" are feminine nouns it could perhaps explain the choice of the word sister, historically. For newer words, the explanation may just be that they were modeled after usage of the word "sister" for older words. – syntonicC Jan 26 '17 at 20:00

5 Answers5

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'Brother company' - or 'brother (anything)' - would almost certainly be considered incorrect (in English). There's no logical reason why it should be incorrect, only historical.

You're right that the first usage of "sister (object)" was probably for ships. I can't find anything earlier.

We use 'she' to refer to something which we have so much affection for that it almost seems rude to refer to it as 'it'. A common usage today is people referring to their cars as if they were female.

When this usage first arose, men dominated society and certainly dominated both ship-building and seafaring. Men, generally, have an affinity for women and so its only natural that they would start to use the pronoun 'she' for something that they were similarly fond of. For long periods at sea, men might feel nurtured by their ship - a quality that we generally associate more with women.

It's possible the usage directly transferred from ships to companies but I see this as quite speculative. It's a nice idea, though.

The first proper companies were formed to finance sea voyages. Each company was formed for a single ship voyage and dissolved at the end. Since the ship basically was the company, the usage of "she" for the ship transferred to the company itself. Thus we now have sister, daughter, etc. companies.

The user speedwell2

This is probably also at least partially a cultural thing. Other cultures do not necessarily want feminine qualities associated with their corporations. They would prefer for their companies to embody more traditionally masculine characteristics like strength and solidity. Supposedly in China companies are more often referred to as masculine, for example.

With a growing pressure to avoid using gender-specific language, I expect the usage of phrases such as 'sister company' to decline in favour of more neutral terms such as 'subsidiary'.

Michael
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  • I agree that the usage probably derives from the custom of referring to a ship as "she", but doesn't "sister" applied to a website sound queer? –  Jan 24 '17 at 12:12
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    I don't personally think so. I guess this falls partially into the last sentence of my answer. If you wanted to avoid the gender aspect while staying on the same lines, you could use the phrase "sibling site". StackExchange is actually good example of this. They would refer to their other sites as "other sites in our network" or "other StackExchange communities" etc. Not as punchy, admittedly. – Michael Jan 24 '17 at 12:18
  • My point is not about avoid using gender terminology, but just about why the feminine reference prevailed in such contexts. –  Jan 24 '17 at 12:23
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    Well 'brother' is wrong and 'sister' you believe sounds weird, so you'll have to avoid using gender. Perhaps you could go for 'second cousin twice removed site'. – Michael Jan 24 '17 at 12:38
  • Brother is not used. Those results look like Chinglish. :) Don't forget parent, as in parent company. Also, for internet sites: related sites. But that does not mean one can say brother or sister site. – Lambie Jan 24 '17 at 15:48
  • @Lambie it was just a simple Google Translate job, so I wouldn't be surprised. Do you mean "brother company" is not used in China? It was my understanding that it was. I will edit it out if it's misleading or just plain wrong. – Michael Jan 24 '17 at 15:52
  • @Michael A simple translation job? So,it was your bad English that was then subsequently translated into Chinese? I am in no way qualified to judge anything at all in Chinese. That seems like an odd way to proceed. One would usually start with something that exists in the source language (in this case English) and then translate it. Rather than taking a term that might literally translate into English (brother or sister company) and then translate that INTO a target language where those terms might indeed exist. – Lambie Jan 24 '17 at 16:17
  • @Lambie I translated the two English phrases into Chinese and I did my best to verify they were accurate. This page (which has both an English and Chinese version - switch in the top right) has both "sister company" and 姐妹公司 on its respective language pages. Based on the quality of the English on the rest of the site it was good enough for me. – Michael Jan 24 '17 at 16:27
  • @Michael The phrase sister and brother company IN ENGLISH is *highly questionable*. Also, the phrases might actually exist in Chinese! Are you catching my drift? – Lambie Jan 24 '17 at 16:38
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Michael Jan 24 '17 at 16:57
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    Brother company and they make printers, printers break, broken printers get you search engine entries..... And it's literally the first page of the search results. Please remove that part of your answer as it is highly misleading. – Helmar Jan 24 '17 at 19:16
  • In English the imbalace towards brother company is even much more. There's just no relation to the problem discussed here. – Helmar Jan 24 '17 at 19:23
  • @Helmar that wasn't my intention. You make a good point, so I've changed that part to be more speculative. – Michael Jan 24 '17 at 19:58
  • 'Sibling' is a well accepted gender neutral alternative. 'Sibling site', 'sibling department' etc – Mitch Jan 24 '17 at 22:13
  • I find the use of the word "incorrect" in the first sentence questionable. I agree the usage of "brother company" is non-standard, possibly confusing, and maybe not the best choice of words. I'd even agree it's inconsistent with historical useage. But it's certainly grammatically correct. English allows metaphors, and there is no prohibition against the creation of new phrases (whether they catch on or not). In order to be considered "incorrect," wouldn't the usage need to violate some rule that has been set by an authoritative body? What rule does it break? – Syntax Junkie Jan 25 '17 at 02:41
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    You trust your life to a ship (or aircraft, or to a lesser extent car). Who would you (a male in a patriarchal society) trust your life to? A wife, maybe. A brother, maybe (but the story of Abel and Cain shows the other side). Is a sister the most likely relation to be unconditionally trustworthy? Also someone who founds a company probably has his financial life invested in it, and is spending more time on it than with his wife, so again the feminine pronoun? – nigel222 Jan 25 '17 at 10:19
  • There is maybe a reason in the etymology (hypothesis), company is from the French compagnie (meaning be with someone, sharing the bread, and later, be associated with someone), the words have no gender in English, but have in French, compagny is feminine. Correct: une compagnie sœur (sœur = sister). To confirm or infirm this, we need to check when the term "sister" has been used for the first time, in which context. – Quidam Feb 16 '19 at 05:54
  • There is one exception to this: it’s common for the same entity to own a pair of teams that play the same sport, a men’s team and a women’s team, which share facilities and staff. In that case, “the sister team” is the women’s team, and the men’s team can be called “the brother team.” – Davislor Sep 07 '22 at 20:54
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It happens that "sister" (and "mother" and "daughter") are used for relationships between various inanimate entities - ships, companies, schools, monasteries, languages - and not "brother" or "father" or "son". This is simply a fact about English, with no obvious explanation.

I'm dubious that this has anything at all to do with the use of "she" for ships and countries, but I may be wrong.

Colin Fine
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    There's always an explanation, but the reason may be lost in time. – Mari-Lou A Jan 24 '17 at 15:21
  • it is also worth noting that small business owners would add "& Sons" to their shop/company name, but never "daughters". Do you know of any historical British companies whose name contain Last Name & Daughters? – Mari-Lou A Jan 24 '17 at 15:27
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    In terms of companies or relationships where ownership is implied, 'Parent' and 'Child' are now more common. However, in terms of side by side relationships, 'sister' is still far more common. – SGR Jan 24 '17 at 15:37
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    A search for "and daughter ltd" produces quite a few. There's one well known one in fiction, but it's hanging round the edge of my mind and I can't bring it into focus. Dickens, or perhaps Hardy. But it is comparatively unusual - for obvious reasons. – Colin Fine Jan 24 '17 at 15:37
  • The NOW corpus (current on-line English) has 24484 instances of "parent company", 1948 of "sister company", 276 "mother company", 31 "daughter company", and a handful of "child", "sibling", "brother" and "father". So @SGR you're right about "parent", but not about "child": "daughter" still occurs three times as often as "child". – Colin Fine Jan 24 '17 at 16:04
  • Why is this answer in the VLQ queue? https://english.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/219188 – NVZ Jan 24 '17 at 18:07
  • It could also be due to genders: "ships, companies, schools, monasteries, languages" are all feminine (at least in Italian). – edmz Jan 24 '17 at 19:42
  • But English speakers are in general completely unaware of genders in other languages, @black, let alone what is in which gender, In any case, there is essentially no use of "brother" in this sense. – Colin Fine Jan 24 '17 at 22:32
  • @Mari-Lou A Because historically women were unable to own property and hence could not inherit control of a company except under unusual circumstances? – Roger Willcocks Jan 25 '17 at 00:27
  • @RogerWillcocks very true, but even as recent as the 1960s or 70s, long after British women had earned the right to vote, and own property, I doubt if there were that many companies that were run by the owner's daughters. and let's not forget company names which carry the abbreviation of Bros. or Brothers – Mari-Lou A Jan 25 '17 at 00:33
  • @Mari-LouA married women adopt the husband surname (at least in Britain & the colonies). Traditionally women receive the dowry when they marry. That was part or all of what should correspond them as inheritance. It dates back to what the ancient Greeks called pherna and parapherna. And that's why sons and not daughters kept the family business and it's unusual (but not so rare) to see business with & daughters – roetnig Jan 25 '17 at 08:16
  • @black Trouble is, English arises from a merger of French and Germanic languages. In French, "bateau" (hence boat) is masculine. In German, "Schiff" is neuter. So it seems unlikely that the use of the feminine pronoun for "ship" is a hangover from either parent language of English. – nigel222 Jan 25 '17 at 10:10
  • @black on the other hand I once talked about the feminine pronoun for "ship" with a Pole, and she thought it was obvious and natural that ships were female ... might it go right back to old Celtic languages, which share roots with Slavic ones? – nigel222 Jan 25 '17 at 10:24
  • @Mari-LouA: the Guinness Book of Records does chronicle a few (admittedly very rare) recent UK business names Last Name & Daughter (in the singular) although never Daughters (plural). (Although this begs the question of how many times "and Sons" was used in a gender-neutral way, where any of the children referred to was female). – smci Jan 25 '17 at 11:50
  • @nigel222: since the normal Polish word for "ship" - 'statek' - is masculine, this suggests that the Polish (and English) habit of thinking of ships as female has absolutely nothing to do with grammatical gender. – Colin Fine Jan 25 '17 at 16:57
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The answer as to why the term brother is never used in context with belonging to the same group, class, or organisation could lie in biology.

Women bear children, they are able to generate, and create new life. Likewise, if a company expands and creates (procreates) a new company, that "baby" company is related to its parent.

Sister cell

From Text-book of Botany: Morphological and Physiological, 1875, an illustration showing the protruding cell-wall containing the daughter-cells.

enter image description here

B the inner lamella of the mother-cell-wall which has entirely escaped (greatly enlarged).

SE Biology

During the days when philosophers used to debate, they tended to regard reproduction as a feminine trait. So naturally organisms/cells capable of producing offspring are also given a feminine trait. The parent cell is often called the mother cell, and the daughter cells are so named because they eventually become mother cell themselves.

It is no coincidence that a sister company is also called (less so today) a daughter company

Thus a sister site can be created or set up, and the main site is said to be the parent. Radio and TV stations, own sister stations and channels. This dispels the concept that the feminine pronoun is used as a term of affection. In a historical context, there is nothing cosy or affectionate about being ‘owned’ by a larger company, although it is in the parent company's best interest that their "daughter company" is equally successful.

sister company
A company which is owned by the same parent company as another company. One parent company can have one or many subsidiaries, which all are sister companies to each other. Business Dictionary

Sister Ships

An excerpt from The Naval Chronicle (including the biographical history of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom), written in 1813, shows that the term sister ship was firmly established by the 19th century, also note the feminine pronoun used.

She is the sister ship [A French ship named Andromaque], in every respect, to the Weser; for their keels were laid down on the same day; they were launched the same day; sailed the same day ; were dismasted on the same day; were brought into Plymouth on the same day; and had a similar number of men, and weight of metal. The capture of these two vessels may perhaps be considered as doing Buonaparte a favour, inasmuch as it may spare him hereafter many unpleasant recollections attached to their names.

The excerpt illustrates perfectly the meaning of sister ship in that period. Today, the International Maritime Organization includes the following characteristics:

  • A sister ship is a ship built by the same yard from the same plans.
  • The acceptable deviation of lightship displacement should be between 1 and 2% of the lightship displacement of the lead ship, depending on the length of the ship.
    Wikipedia

The earliest example of sister ship I found on Google books, was its plural form, in a French-English Naval dictionary, titled Vocabulaire des termes de marine, printed in 1799.

enter image description here

All of which may appear to contradict my earlier statement, but I don't think it does. The term sister is derived from biology, and in the shipping industry, it refers to a ship built at a later date but following the same design and specifications as the "older sister ship". The parentage (mentioned by @BaconBits in the comments below) is the same, therefore any ship ‘created’ in the same yard, with the same hull, a similar weight, and equipment etc. is, in a figurative sense, a sister.

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Mari-Lou A
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    What about sister ship or sister city? That doesn't seem to follow your definition. It appears the term can be used for groupings of objects that are not necessarily in a hierarchy. – syntonicC Jan 24 '17 at 15:46
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    "Women bear children" - sure. That creates a parent-child relationship, not a "sister" relationship. If you have a holding company (say Holding Ltd.) and it has two companies that actually produce things (say Widgets Co. and Gizmos Inc.), then Widgets Co. and Gizmos Inc. would be sister companies, while Holding Ltd. is their parent company. – AndyT Jan 24 '17 at 15:50
  • Your biological assumption is very interesting, but how and when could that usage have moved from labs and scientific papers to enter common speech? –  Jan 24 '17 at 17:35
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    @syntonicC Sister city I'll give you, but sister ships still fits. Sister ships are typically those of nearly identical design and which often have been built in the same place at the same time and often in the same dock by the same shipbuilders. They could be said to be, "born of the same parentage." – Bacon Bits Jan 24 '17 at 20:58
  • @BaconBits Ah, you're right about sister ship. I thought it meant something different. I should have looked it up first. – syntonicC Jan 24 '17 at 23:52
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    @AndyT If you have a heirarchy of companies, one company may simultaneously be a sibling, parent and child (of different companies). If the mother-daughter analogy is used for parent-child relationships, then 'sister' is the most consistent term for siblings. – FLHerne Jan 25 '17 at 11:22
  • Also ships are usually treated as feminine is English – Chris H Jan 25 '17 at 16:36
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(Answering your question "could brother be used instead?") The OED says:

brother, n. IV. 10. A thing perceived as resembling, or having a close connection to, another or others.

with citations including:

a1475   (▸a1376)   Langland Piers Plowman (Harl. 875) (1867) A. ii. l. 141 (MED), Feire speche þat is feiþles is falsnes broþer.

1802   Wordsworth in Wordsworth & S. T. Coleridge Lyrical Ballads (ed. 2) II. 124   That April morn, Of this the very brother.

1830   Tennyson Isabel in Poems 8   A clear stream flowing with a muddy one, Till in its onward current it absorbs..The vexéd eddies of its wayward brother.

1911   Polit. Sci. Q. 26 164   In the United States, the telephone has grown to be the big brother of the telegraph.

1978   J. Maxwell America's Fascinating Indian Heritage iii. 97/2   The stickball game the Southeastern tribesmen aptly called the little brother of war.

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Gareth Rees
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  • Orwell's use of Big brother as a symbol of the regime had an altogether chilling effect on the reader. Having a close connection to a repelling symbol is right inline with doublethink. – MikeJRamsey56 Jun 16 '17 at 17:24
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The use of "sister" for a related item has been common since the 13th century, and seems to be independent of the gender of the noun.

OED

Sister

IV. Something which is closely related to another thing.

9. Something having a close kinship or relationship to another; something belonging to the same class or group. Sometimes personified.

See also appositive uses with the sense ‘fellow’.

a. With reference to an immaterial thing, esp. a quality, emotion, or behavioural trait.

a1225 (▸c1200) Vices & Virtues (1888) 29 Of rihte ȝeleaue. All ðat hire suster, ðe rihte ȝeleaue, hire seiȝeð, all hie [sc. hope] hit fastliche hopeð1. [Of True Faith: All that her sister, true faith says to her, she sincerely trusts it.[2]]

b. With reference to a material thing, place, etc.

a1500 (▸c1477) T. Norton Ordinal of Alchemy (BL Add.) (1975) l. 2320 (MED) Quycsyluere..wil nevir cleve to a thing But to metal of oone kind or odyre, For there he fyndith sustir or brodyre. [Quicksilver (mercury)... will not stick to anything except to a metal of one kind or another, for thatis where he will find a sister or brother.]

1580 T. Crewe tr. G. Meurier Nosegay of Morall Philos. sig. F3 Q. Who is sister to death? A. Sleepe.

2005 Independent (Nexis) 5 Feb. 45 The drink incorporates creme de mure (blackberry liqueur), the somewhat sweeter sister of creme de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur).

Sister, in this [attributive] sense thus pre-dates the nautical influence.

†10. Nautical. Any of various items of tackle having two or more matching components.

Obsolete.

1410–12 in N. H. Nicolas Hist. Royal Navy (1847) II. 475 Un rakke ove ii. sustres, un trusp'aill ove ii. sustres, ii. slenges, un trusse, un canon.

NB: by this time, (i) nouns had lost their gender. (ii) The Old English noun "scip" (ship) was not feminine - it was neuter https://bosworthtoller.com/57769

1 Of feste hope. HIER after cumþ an oðer hali mihte ðe is iclepedfirma spes, þat is, fast hope to godalmihti. All ðat hire suster, ðe rihte ȝeleaue, hire seiȝeð, all hie hit fastliche hopeð.

[2] my translation

Greybeard
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