Although tener doesn't have a cognate (an equivalent word with a common ancestor) in English, the verbs derived from it do, and they are among the English verbs ending in "-tain." Thus detener has the same origin as the English "detain," mantener is related to "maintain," and so on.

But just because English's "-tain" words are related to Spanish's -tener verbs doesn't mean that they are exact matches. For example, detener and retener are often interchangeable in Spanish as their meanings can be quite similar, but the English verbs are less likely to be used synonymously. Similarly, the meanings of "to hold something up" and "to defend a viewpoint" can both be expressed in Spanish with sostener and mantener, while the English verbs tend to have less overlap in meaning.

Here are the Spanish verbs derived from tener along with some of their most common meanings: