WhatsApp risks losing its most loyal customers: Indian uncles and aunties

They could be related to your parents or friends of your parents or a random person on the street who is older. Kids literally walk into mom-and-pop shops and address the shopkeeper as uncle or aunty.

A child will simply not be introduced in a familiar way to someone you don't trust or respect - they will be kept away. If the person is referred to for some reason, they'll be referred to as "that person" or somesuch.

When I ask my son to refer to someone as uncle or auntie, it means I'm signalling to him that they have some degree of standing in my life: they are a colleague, or friend, or acquaintance to whom I am asking him to show respect on my behalf.

An uncle or auntie is someone who "is known". By bestowing that title, and instructing your child to use it with them, you are granting them status in the eyes of your child, and segregating them explicitly from the general set of all older people.

When the term is used by adults, it naturally refers to the _even older_ generation of the elderly. So in this case, where the perspective of the writer is an adult perspective, it refers to the elderly.

Lastly, there's a subtle detail that should be made explicit. When it's used "in general" like it is in this title, it does not imply that I, or any reader, considers all of those people uncles and aunties personally. It's implicit in the usage that we are referring to "people who are uncle and aunties for those whom they are the uncles and aunties of".

I hope I've done a half-decent job, because the entire set of cultural associations around that word are hard to get across.

For me, close relationship people are always assigned as native words. Stranger, in urban setting, are uncle & aunty. Although now kids also call me uncle. Today's kids' usage of native names has shrinked, & more people are now uncle aunty now.

Whatsapp forwards, crazy info like tracking chips in currency notes, cow urine the solution to every pain, indian X is the best X in world, overflowing nationalism, are more from uncle & aunties, who are not good with technology, & got introduced to whatsapp directly.

"Mister" is generally used for someone older and "sir" is usually used for someone around your age. The equivalent mapping in many Asian languages is "mister" = "uncle", and "sir" = "brother".

In the case where you are speaking generally, as in writing an article about some people rather than addressing them directly, then it is sort of subjective and not relative to the speaker's/writer's age, but "older" people (~50-60s onwards) are referred to as "uncle/auntie" and "younger" people are referred to as "brother/sister". What is "older" and "younger" here is a very fuzzy line, and it's possible to offend someone by using the wrong term, but this is pretty universal and not exclusive to Asian languages.

It could be either brother (bhaiyya, anna, chettan ) or Sister (deedi, akka, chechi .. ) if the person is elder to you but not too older than you. So if you are in 20's , and shopkeeper (who is Raju) is in his 40s, you might call him Raju bhaiyya (or Raju anna in Tamil, Raju chettan in Malayalam).

If there is a visible One generation gap, then Uncle or Auntie is used.

And if there is a visible two generation gap, then grandpa and grandma is also suffixed to call them (but this is not very common.. and sometimes could be taken as insult)

And the elders might call you Son or Daughter (beta, beti ..) in a similar way.

And you could be complete strangers.