The relative cuyo means "whose" and is used to show possession within a relative clause. It belongs to the more formal end of Spanish and appears more often in writing than in everyday speech, but any serious student should learn it. Its distinctive feature is that it agrees with the thing possessed, not with the possessor.
The Four Forms
Cuyo behaves like an adjective. It has four forms that agree in gender and number with the noun it modifies.
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| cuyo | masculine singular |
| cuya | feminine singular |
| cuyos | masculine plural |
| cuyas | feminine plural |
Agreement with the Thing Possessed
This is the single most important rule: cuyo agrees with the thing possessed, not with the owner. English speakers often get this wrong because in English "whose" doesn't change form. In Spanish, it does.
El hombre cuya esposa conoces vive en Bogotá.
The man whose wife you know lives in Bogotá.
The man is masculine, but cuya is feminine because it agrees with esposa (feminine), the thing possessed. The owner's gender is irrelevant.
La casa cuyos dueños viajaron está vacía.
The house whose owners traveled is empty.
Here cuyos is masculine plural because it agrees with dueños, even though casa (the owner in the sentence's structure) is feminine singular.
No Article Between Cuyo and the Noun
Unlike English "whose," cuyo attaches directly to the possessed noun with no definite article in between. Saying cuyo el libro or cuya la esposa is ungrammatical.
El autor cuyo libro gané es uruguayo.
The author whose book I won is Uruguayan.
Notice there is no el between cuyo and libro.
Formal and Written Register
Cuyo belongs mostly to formal and written Spanish. In conversation, Latin American speakers often avoid it and restructure the sentence with de or que.
| Formal with cuyo | Conversational alternative |
|---|---|
| El chico cuya madre es doctora... | El chico que su mamá es doctora... |
| La empresa cuyos empleados protestaron... | La empresa que sus empleados protestaron... |
The colloquial que su forms are considered incorrect in formal writing, but they are extremely common in speech. If you are writing an essay or article, cuyo is the right choice.
Cuyo with Prepositions
Cuyo can be introduced by a preposition, and the preposition comes before cuyo. This creates elegant sentences that would otherwise be clumsy.
El escritor en cuya casa nos reunimos es famoso.
The writer in whose house we gathered is famous.
Los niños a cuyos padres llamamos ya están bien.
The children whose parents we called are already well.
Cuyo Is Never a Question Word
Do not confuse relative cuyo with anything related to ¿cuyo? as a question word—it doesn't exist in that role in modern Spanish. Asking "whose" uses ¿de quién? instead.
¿De quién es ese carro?
Whose car is that?
Ese es el hombre cuyo carro gané en el sorteo.
That is the man whose car I won in the raffle.
For the broader picture of relative clauses, see Restrictive Relative Clauses and Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses.
Related Topics
- Restrictive Relative ClausesB1 — Learn how restrictive relative clauses identify and specify nouns without commas in Spanish.
- Non-Restrictive Relative ClausesB1 — Use commas and a wider range of relative pronouns to add extra information to nouns in Spanish.
- Relative Clauses with PrepositionsB2 — Choose between que, el que, el cual, and quien when a relative clause follows a preposition.
- Subjunctive in Relative ClausesB2 — Use the subjunctive in relative clauses when the antecedent is unknown, hypothetical, or nonexistent.
- Cuyo (Whose)B2 — Cuyo means 'whose' and agrees with the thing possessed, not the possessor