This study combines corpus-based comparison and open-ended survey data to investigate kinship terminology usage in introductory contexts across languages. Focusing on the expression ‘this/here is my brother’, it examines how speakers of English and Chinese introduce a brother, with particular attention to whether they use a kinship term alone or add an appositive personal name. In addition, an open-ended questionnaire was completed by 119 participants representing 10 language backgrounds. The study further explores the cognitive motivations underlying these cross-linguistic differences in introductory kinship expressions. The results show that: (1) in the corpus data, Chinese speakers tend to introduce their brothers using kinship term alone, whereas English speakers typically include the brother’s personal name; (2) the questionnaire data suggest that many European-language speakers prefer a ‘kinship term + name’ pattern, whereas East Asian-language speakers more often rely on the kinship term alone and (3) these patterns can be interpreted with reference to the Focus-Shift Principle, the Principle of Least Effort and Typological Markedness. Overall, the study extends the English–Chinese corpus comparison to a broader multilingual sample and offers a cognitively informed account of recurring cross-linguistic tendencies in brother-introduction contexts.