This page is about the card game. There is also Happy Families, a British television comedy programme.

Happy Families is a traditional card game played in the UK, usually with a specially made set of picture cards, featuring illustrations of fictional families of four, most often based on occupation types. The idea of the game is to collect whole families. This is done by asking another player whether they have a certain card. If they don`t have it, it is their turn to ask. If they do, they have to pass it to the first player, who can ask again. Play continues until a player matches all of his or her cards into family groups. The game can adapted for use with an ordinary set of playing cards.

The game was devised by John Jaques II, who is also credited with inventing tiddlywinks, ludo and snakes and ladders, and first published before the Great Exhibition of 1851. Cards following Jaques's original designs, with wonderfully grotesque illustrations possibly by Sir John Tenniel (there was no official credit), are still being made.

Family members

The names of the family members are structured in a formal way:

• Mr X the Y
• Mrs X the Y's Wife
• Master X the Y's Son
• Miss X the Y's Daughter

Family names

Family names, which vary from edition to edition, include:

• Block, the Barber
• Block, the Builder
• Bones, the Butcher
• Brush, the Artist
• Bun, the Baker
• Bung, the Brewer
• Chalk, the Teacher
• Chip, the Carpenter
• Constable, the Policeman
• Dose, the Doctor
• Dip, the Dyer
• Field, the Farmer
• Green, the Grocer (most likely a greengrocer)
• Grits, the Grocer
• Hose, the Fireman
• Mug, the Milkman
• Soot, the Sweep
• Stamp, the Postman
• Tape, the Tailor
• Tuckin, the Chef
• Pots, the Painter (maybe a decorator rather than an artist)

The eleven families indicated by italics are from Jaques's original edition.