The story
- German · calque ofFamilienroman
- English todayfamily romance
From family + romance, in psychoanalytic sense after German Familienroman.
First known use, by meaning
- from 19th c. A romantic story about a given family.
- from 20th c. A childhood fantasy whereby a child imagines that their real parents are in fact royalty or otherwise of high birth; (loosely), the emotional ties linking the various members of a family.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.