ਦੋਹਤੀ

What does dohti mean in Punjabi? A dohti (ਦੋਹਤੀ) is a daughter's daughter: a granddaughter through a daughter. Punjabi names each grandchild by the exact link, so a girl is a dohti to her mother's parents, her nana and nani, while a son's daughter is a poti to her dada and dadi.

What does dohti mean in Punjabi?

Relation lists in Punjabi give dohti (ਦੋਹਤੀ) as a granddaughter, a daughter's daughter, and record the variant form dohtri (ਦੋਹਤਰੀ). The plural is dohtian (ਦੋਹਤੀਆਂ). Dohti is the feminine half of a matched pair: the boy is a dohta, the girl is a dohti, just as pota and poti pair up on the son's side. The word is built on the family word for a daughter, from the old Indo-Aryan word for daughter, Sanskrit duhitri, a close cousin of the English word daughter.

How is a dohti different from a poti?

A poti is a son's daughter, and a dohti is a daughter's daughter. That single step, through a son or through a daughter, is the whole difference, and Punjabi keeps it sharp where English lets one word, granddaughter, cover both girls. The same child holds both names at once, from two different doorsteps: to her father's parents she is their poti, and to her mother's parents she is their dohti.

Why does the dohti hold a special place at the nanke?

A dohti's grandparents' house is her nanke, the maternal grandparents' home, and family guides describe the mother's parents as linked with warmth and pampering. The dohti is often the child a nani teaches songs, stitches and kitchen ways to during long holiday stays, and her arrival brings her mother's childhood home alive again. The line keeps its own name in the next generation too: a pardohti (ਪੜਦੋਹਤੀ) is a daughter's granddaughter.