great-niece

The term 'great-niece' is a compound formed within the English kinship system to specify a more distant generational relationship. The word 'great' was adopted from Old English, where it originally conveyed physical size or importance, and was later applied genealogically to denote an additional step of descent. 'Niece' entered English via Old French from the Latin 'neptis', which broadly meant a female descendant. The compounding logic is straightforward: 'great-' prefixes 'niece' to indicate the subject is one generation further removed from the common ancestor than a standard niece, literally extending the lineal distance.

Structure: great (degree of removal) + niece (sibling's daughter) 'great' (from Old English 'grēat', meaning large, coarse, thick; here used to indicate a degree of familial separation). 'niece' (from Old French 'niece', from Latin 'neptis', meaning granddaughter, niece; here meaning sibling's daughter).