Nibling!
Nibling! The gender neutral term for niece/nephew
When raising a gender-creative babe, there are a few alterations one has to make to the language they use. The fun part is that there are no hard-fast rules and you can use or invent whatever words you want. The term sibling is gender neutral, but in 2016, when Zoomer was born, I hadn’t heard of any gender-neutral terms for referring to the child of a sibling. All it took was one quick Google search: “Gender neutral word for niece or nephew” and I found nibling.
Nibling is just a creative mash-up of (n)iece/(n)ephew and s(ibling). And it is a perfectly suitable word, because it is likely that the new baby is so gosh darn cute you’ll want to just nibble their squishy little toes off! But please do refrain from cannibalism.
So there you have it, a gender-free word for the children of siblings and close friends — nibling!
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