Family members in Italian: la famiglia

The family members in Italian are madre (mother), padre (father), fratello (brother), sorella (sister), figlio (son), figlia (daughter), nonno (grandfather), nonna (grandmother), zio (uncle), zia (aunt) and cugino (cousin). The family is la famiglia. Two words do double duty and are worth knowing early: fratelli is "brothers" and also "brothers and sisters", and nipote is a nephew, a niece or a grandchild. Below are the words, how to say them, the one grammar rule that comes with them, and which family words Italian films say most.

Updated 16 October 2026 · 4 min read

Family members in Italian

Gl in figlio and moglie is close to the lli of "million", and the double consonants of mamma, nonno and fratello are held a moment longer than single ones.

Words that cover more than one relative

• Fratelli is the plural of fratello, and it is also the ordinary word for "brothers and sisters": Hai fratelli?, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?". A group of sisters alone is sorelle.
• Figli is "sons", and also "children" in the sense of a person's offspring: Ho tre figli can be three sons or a mix.
• Nonni is "grandparents" as well as "grandfathers", and zii is "aunts and uncles".
• Nipote is a nephew, a niece or a grandchild. Italian makes no distinction, and context settles it: mio nipote is "my nephew" or "my grandson", mia nipote "my niece" or "my granddaughter".

"Mia madre", without "la"

Italian normally puts the article in front of a possessive: la mia casa, "my house". Family members are the exception. A singular family word takes no article: mia madre, mio padre, mio fratello, sua sorella.

The article comes back in three cases:

• in the plural: i miei fratelli, le mie sorelle;
• with the affectionate words: la mia mamma, il mio papà;
• with loro, "their": il loro figlio.

Which family words do Italian films say most?

We counted each family word in Italian film and television subtitles.

Padre is at the top, at 857.8 times per million words, but it is a ceiling: it is also the word for a priest. Mamma comes next at 664.4, a little ahead of madre at 642.2: on screen, Italians say "mum" slightly more than "mother". Papà is far behind padre, at 270.3, though papa written without its accent, which is the Pope, is left out of the count.

Moglie, "wife", at 411.5, is said more often than marito, "husband", at 260.4, and figlio, "son", more often than figlia. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all come well down the list.

Learn them in a sentence

• Ho un fratello e due sorelle. — I have one brother and two sisters.
• Mia madre si chiama Anna. — My mother is called Anna.
• Quanti anni ha tuo padre? — How old is your father?
• I miei nonni abitano a Roma. — My grandparents live in Rome.
• Hai figli? — Do you have children?

The family words are taught early in the free Italian course, Verbavia (our own course), with a recording of each. Madre, padre, mamma and figlio are all among the thousand words Italian films say most, though none makes the 100 most common Italian words, which are almost all grammar. Other everyday sets: greetings in Italian, colours in Italian and numbers 1 to 100.

Sources

• Treccani, Vocabolario on line: nipote and fratello, for the senses of each.
• Wikipedia: Italian grammar, on possessives with family nouns.
• The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com. They are computed by scripts/frequency_thousand.py and printed from its output rather than typed.