quality:corruption, stylistic:tone, structural:reformatting
Family

Inanna's twin brother was Utu (known as Shamash in Akkadian), the god of the sun and justice. In Sumerian texts, Inanna and Utu are depicted as extremely close; some modern authors even perceive their relationship as bordering on incestuous. In the myth of her descent into the underworld, Inanna addresses Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld, as her "older sister," yet the two goddesses almost never appear together elsewhere in Sumerian literature and were not placed in the same category in god lists. In some Neo-Assyrian sources, Ishtar is also associated with Adad, with the relationship mirroring that between Shaushka and her brother Teshub in Hurrian mythology.

The most common tradition regarded Nanna and his wife Ningal as her parents. Examples of it are present in sources as diverse as a god list from the Early Dynastic period, a hymn of Ishme-Dagan relaying how Enlil and Ninlil bestowed Inanna's powers upon her, a late syncretic hymn to Nanaya, and an Akkadian ritual from Hattusa. While some authors assert that in Uruk Inanna was usually regarded as the daughter of the sky god An, it is possible that references to him as her father are only referring to his status as an ancestor of Nanna and thus his daughter. In literary texts, Enlil or Enki may be addressed as her fathers but references to major gods being "fathers" can also be examples of the use of this word as an epithet indicating seniority.

Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz), the god of shepherds, is usually described as Inanna's husband, but according to some interpretations Inanna's loyalty to him is questionable; in the myth of her descent into the Underworld, she abandons Dumuzid and permits the galla demons to drag him down into the underworld as her replacement. In a different myth, The Return of Dumuzid Inanna instead mourns over Dumuzid's death and ultimately decrees that he will be allowed to return to Heaven to be with her for one half of the year. Dina Katz notes that the portrayal of their relationship in Inanna's Descent is unusual; it does not resemble the portrayal of their relationship in other myths about Dumuzi's death, which almost never pin the blame for it on Inanna, but rather on demons or even human bandits. A large corpus of love poetry describing encounters between Inanna and Dumuzi has been assembled by researchers. However, local manifestations of Inanna/Ishtar were not necessarily associated with Dumuzi. In Kish, the tutelary deity of the city, Zababa (a war god), was viewed as the consort of a local hypostasis of Ishtar, though after the Old Babylonian period Bau, introduced from Lagash, became his spouse (an example of a couple consisting out of a warrior god and a medicine goddess, common in Mesopotamian mythology) and Ishtar of Kish started to instead be worshipped on her own.

Inanna is not usually described as having any offspring; however, in the myth of Lugalbanda, as well as in a single building inscription from the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BCE), the warrior god Shara is described as her son. She was also sometimes considered the mother of Lulal, who is described in other texts as the son of Ninsun. Wilfred G. Lambert described the relation between Inanna and Lulal as "close but unspecified" in the context of Inanna's Descent. There is also similarly scarce evidence for the love goddess Nanaya being regarded as her daughter, but it is possible all of these instances merely refer to an epithet indicating closeness between the deities and were not a statement about actual parentage.