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:
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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?
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Where does this usage come from?
Best Answer
'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.
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'.