### league, clan
league (Latin = alliance) Political alliance among states or within a state. In Hungary the alliances between Sigismund and the baron families of the Hunyadi age are called leagues. These families often entered into alliance formally, in a written form, for example, in connection with succession to the throne, obtaining honours, giving away estates or marriages. TI clan In general ethnical sense it is a group of people originating from a real or fictive ancestor. The members of the clan were not allowed to get married to one another. In Hungarian clans the members keep their relations only on the father's side, men consider the member of their wife's clan their relatives, but not their clan. Till their marriage women belong to the clan of their fathers, after the marriage they belong to the clan of their husbands. In 13-14th-century sources we can often find so-called 'noble clans', which included the upper layers of society. Their characteristic feature are: the members descended from a famous ancestor, they have common name and coat-of-arms, they possessed their inherited estates by the clan right, and they have typical personal names. The Hungarian noblemen's right of possession preserved the idea of the clan, or in other words, kinship till the late Middle Ages through aviticity. TI