In Islamic religious law there are two words:
1- mahram
2- namahram
A woman’s mahram is a person whom she is never permitted to marry because of their close blood relationship (such as her father, grandfather, great-grandfather, her son, grandson, etc.)
and namahram or non-mahram is someone to whom she is not related such as in-laws, strangers, cousins.
Are there English equivalents to these words?
Best Answer
Modern American English has a term for individuals who are related, but distantly enough that marriage is not entirely taboo: kissing cousins. The meaning of this term has evolved over time1, and it is the rare example of a word whose meaning has largely not been updated in most dictionaries, but you can see examples of it used in a way similar to namahram:
As far as a word for mahram, in the US that would probably just be relative, as we are a very incest-averse culture, in general.
1 "Kissing cousins" apparently originally, back in the nineteenth century, meant people who were closely enough related that they could kiss without scandal; for some reason, this is the definition still reflected in virtually all standard dictionaries. Probably in both meanings of the term it would refer to 2nd-degree cousins or further, and also to non-blood-relations who grew up together or had other close, family-like ties.