Family is a word that’s often invoked in service of things like tradition and stability. At least in recent years. But it’s not as old a word as you might think, and it hasn’t always meant what it means now.
“Family” showed up in English in the 1400s, adopted from French. What it meant at first had very little to do with what we think of today; a “family” was the collection of servants for a household. Charles Cornwallis wrote a discourse about Prince Henry in 1629, and pointed out that “His family..consisted of few lesse then five hundred.” He wasn’t talking about people related to the prince; he was talking about servants who worked in the palace.
“Family” was used in a similar way to talk about the retinue, or set of traveling servants, attendants, and aides that would travel with a high-ranking person in those days: “Sir John de Walpole,..had letters of protection, being in the family or retinue of that king” (1765).
The word comes from the Latin word “familia.” It was used in Latin to mean a troop of gladiators — and that was another way “family” was used in English, too. This sense is fairly obscure — after all, how often do you need to talk about a troop of gladiators — but it’s still available when you find yourself in a one of those pesky gladiator-centric conversations that pop up from time to time.
Not everybody in the 1400s had a house full of servants, of course. While even a person of a lower class might have one or two servants, many people found themselves in a house filled instead with boarders, acquaintances, and, yes, even relatives. That whole collection, living together under one roof, was also called a family. If we were to describe something like that today, we’d say “families,” focusing on the kinship units — but in 1680, that’s not at all what the word meant: “Mr. King and all his Family (except his Maid-servant, by name Joan Elge) was gone to Church.”
“Family” didn’t acquire its current meaning of “near kin” until the 1800s. It seems to have been part of the western world morphing into its present capitalistic form (which of course we think is both ancient and natural) — having a “job,” “going to work,” and the basic idea that your commercial activities and your home activities are a lot more separate than they once were.
You can get a better sense of the original use of “family” by looking at the word “familiar.” It’s closely related to “family,” but it doesn’t carry any connotation of kinship. A “familiar” was originally a servant too, just like “family.” Over the centuries, a “familiar” has also been an officer of the Inquisition, a servant in a religious order like a monastery, a regular customer, and a magical assistant. But it has never meant “someone related to you.” When “family” moved on to its modern meaning, evidently “familiar,” although familiar, was considered a black sheep and left behind.
