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An orphan (from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 ??fa???) is a child whose natural parents are absent or dead. One legal definition used in the USA is someone bereft through "death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, both parents".






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Thomas Kennington Orphans 1885
An orphan (from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 ??fa???) is a child whose natural parents are absent or dead. One legal definition used in the USA is someone bereft through "death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, both parents". Common usage limits the term to children, (or the young of animals) who have lost both parents. On this basis half-orphans are those with one surviving parent.

In certain animal species
Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
 where the father typically abandons the mother and young at or prior to birth, the young will be called orphans when the mother dies regardless of the condition of the father.

Populations

Continent Number of
orphans (1000's)		 Orphans as percentage
of all children
Africa34,294 11.9%
Asia 65,5046.5%
Latin America & Caribbean8,1667.4%
Total107,9647.6%
  • 2001 figures from 2002 UNICEF/UNAIDS report


Notable orphans

Notable orphans include world leaders such as Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the first President of South Africa of South Africa to be elected in a universal suffrage democratic election, serving in the office from 1994?99....
 and Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States . He was List of governors of Florida of Florida , commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans , and eponym of the era of Jacksonian democracy....
; the Muslim prophet Muhammed; writers such as The Brontė
Brontė

The Bront? sisters , Charlotte Bront? , Emily Bront? and Anne Bront? , were English writers of the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published and were subsequently accepted into the canon of great English literature....
 sisters, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, Short story writer, Editing and Literary criticism, and is considered part of the American Romanticism. Best known for his tales of Mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the Detective fiction genre....
, and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist and Education reform made him the most influential member of the aristocracy Tolstoy....
. The american orphan Henry Darger
Henry Darger

'Henry Joseph Darger, Jr.' was a reclusive United States writer and artist who worked as a janitor in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm,...
 portrayed the horrible conditions of his ophanage in his art work. Entertainment greats such as Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong

Louis Daniel Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer.Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an innovative cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence on jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performers....
, Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organ whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque music period and brought it to its ultimate maturity....
, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
, and Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth

George Herman Ruth, Jr. , also popularly known as "Babe", "The Bambino", and "The Sultan of Swat", was an United States Major League Baseball baseball player from –....
; and innumerable fictional characters in literature and comics.

Orphans in literature

Orphaned characters are extremely common as literary protagonists, especially in children
Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve and is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes exclude young-adult fiction, comic books, or other genres....
's and fantasy literature
Fantasy literature

Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, the majority of fantasy works have been literature. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other media....
. The lack of parents leaves the characters to pursue more interesting and adventurous lives, by freeing them from familial obligations and controls, and depriving them of more prosaic lives. It creates characters that are self-contained and introspective and who strive for affection. Orphans can metaphorically search for self-understanding through attempting to know their roots. Parents can also be allies and sources of aid for children, and removing the parents makes the character's difficulties more severe. Parents, furthermore, can be irrelevant to the theme a writer is trying to develop, and orphaning the character frees the writer from the necessity to depict such an irrelevant relationship; if one parent-child relationship is important, removing the other parent prevents complicating the necessary relationship. All these characteristics make orphans attractive characters for authors.

Orphans are common in fairy tales, such as some variants of Cinderella
Cinderella

Cinderella , is a well-known classic folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world....
.

Many superhero
Superhero

A superhero is a Character "of unprecedented physical prowess dedicated to act of derring-do in the public interest". Since the debut of the prototype superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes?ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas?have dominated American comic books and crossed over into other mass...
es, including Superman
Superman

Superman is a Character , a comic book superhero widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio, and sold to DC Comics in 1938, the character first appeared in Action Comics Action Comics 1 and subseque...
, Batman
Batman

Batman is a Character , a comic book superhero co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger , appearing in publications by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939....
, Robin
Robin (comics)

Robin is the name of several fictional characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, originally created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, as a junior counterpart to DC Comics superhero Batman....
, Spider-Man
Spider-Man

Spider-Man is a fictional character appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character First appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 , and was created by scripter-editor Stan Lee and artist-plotter Steve Ditko....
, Wolverine
Wolverine (comics)

Wolverine is a Character , a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character First appearance in Hulk #180 and was created by writer Len Wein and Marvel art director John Romita Sr., who designed the character, and was first drawn for publication by Herb Trimpe....
, Iron Man
Iron Man

Iron Man is a Character , a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character First appearance in Tales of Suspense #39 , and was created by writer-editor Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, and artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby....
, Storm and Daredevil
Daredevil (Marvel Comics)

Daredevil is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Daredevil #1 and was created by writer-Literary editor Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett, with an unspecified amount of input from Jack Kirby....
, are orphans.

A number of well known authors have written books featuring orphans including Charlotte Brontė
Charlotte Brontė

Charlotte Bront? was a United Kingdom novelist, the eldest of the three famous Bront? sisters whose novels have become standards of English literature....
, Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens, Royal Society of Arts , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English people novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous Reform movement....
, Mark Twain
Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an United Statesmerican author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer....
, A. J. Cronin
A. J. Cronin

Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scotland novelist, dramatist and writer of non-fiction who was one of the most renowned storytellers of the twentieth century....
, Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was a United Kingdom novelist, short story writer and screenwriter, born in Wales of Norwegian people parents. After service in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, In which he became a flying ace, he rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both Children's literature and adults, and became one of the world's bes...
 and J.K. Rowling, as well as some less well known authors of famous orphans like Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie

Little Orphan Annie is a daily United States comic strip, created by Harold Gray , that first appeared on August 5, 1924. The title, suggested by an editor at the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, was inspired by James Whitcomb Riley's popular 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" which begins:Comic strips...
 and the Baudelaire siblings of the Series of Unfortunate Events. One recurring storyline has been the relationship that the orphan can have with an adult from outside his or her immediate family. Some of the most emotive works have been those featuring the relationship between a man and a boy, particularly boys that are coming of age.

Orphans in Holy Scriptures

Many books of the Bible
Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
 as well as the Quran contain the idea that helping and defending orphans is very important and God-pleasing matter. Several citations:
  • "Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan." (Hebrew Bible
    Hebrew Bible

    The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
    , Exodus
    Exodus

    Exodus is the second book of the Jewish Torah and of the Christian Old Testament. It tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the Mountain of God Sinai....
     22:22)
  • "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (New Testament
    New Testament

    The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christianity Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
    , James 1:27)
  • "Leave your orphans; I will protect their lives. Your widows too can trust in me." (Hebrew Bible
    Hebrew Bible

    The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
    , Jeremiah
    Jeremiah

    Jeremiah was one of the 'greater prophet' of the Hebrew Bible. He was the son of Hilkiah, a priest of Anathoth.His writings are put together in the Book of Jeremiah and, according to tradition, the Book of Lamentations....
     49:11)


  • And they feed, for the love of Allah, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive,- (The Holy Quran, The Human: 8)
  • Therefore, treat not the orphan with harshness, (The Holy Quran, The Morning Hours: 9)


See also

  • Adoption
    Adoption

    Adoption is the act of Family law placing a child with a parent or parents other than those to whom they were born. An adoption order has the effect of severing parental responsibilities and rights of the original parent and transferring those responsibilities and rights to the adoptive parent....
  • AIDS orphan
    AIDS orphan

    AIDS orphan refers to a child whose mother has died due to AIDS. There are 70,000 new AIDS orphans a year. By the year 2010, it is estimated that over 20 million children will be orphaned by AIDS....
  • Orphanage
    Orphanage

    An orphanage is an institution devoted to the Childcare whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable to care for them. Parents, and sometimes grandparents, are legally responsible for supporting children, but in the absence of these or other relatives willing to care for the children, they become a ward of the state, and orphanages are a w...
  • Orphan Train
    Orphan Train

    The Orphan Train was a social experiment that transported children from crowded coastal cities of the United States to the country's Midwest United States for adoption....
  • Street children
    Street children

    Street children is a term used to refer to children who live on the streets of a city. They are deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 and 18 years old, and their population between different cities is varied....