I have never understood when a person would describe someone as their second, third, etc cousin once, twice removed. Removed from what? Any help here.
Sincerely,
Genaro
I have never understood when a person would describe someone as their second, third, etc cousin once, twice removed. Removed from what? Any help here.
Sincerely,
Genaro
“Removed” simply means “of a different generation.”
First cousin once removed: my cousin’s child, or a parent’s cousin.
First cousin twice removed: my cousin’s grandchild, or a grandparent’s cousin.
For some reason, this confuses the heck out of people. A lot of people simply refer to #1 as “second cousin,” which (technically) means someone of your generation who shares common great-grandparents rather than common grandparents.
ETA: In my experience, most people are so flummoxed by the “removed” (or even the “second cousin”) that they avoid the labels in common speech.
If you’re an only child:
Your first cousins are the other grandchildren of your grandparents.
Your second cousins are the other great-grandchildren of your great-grandparents.
Your third cousins are the other great-great grandchildren of your great-great grandparents.
Your first cousin’s children are your first cousins, once removed.
Your first cousin’s grandchildren are your first cousins, twice removed.
The “removes” refer to the differences in generation. Second cousins share common great-grandparents, and are of the same generation. First cousins, once removed are of different generations. The grandparent of one is the great-grandparent of the other.
Aargh. And that’s not confusing?
Draw a family tree, and it makes a lot more sense.
I don’t think so, but try it this way: You understand who your first cousins are, right?
If your first cousin has a kid, that’s your first cousin, once removed.
If your first cousin, once removed has a kid, that’s your first cousin, twice removed.
Okay, now let’s do second cousins.
Start with your first cousin. If he has a kid, and you have a kid, the kids are second cousins.
If each of the second cousins has a kid, they are third cousins.
Better?
The degree of cousinship (first, second, third) corresponds to how many generations you have to count back to find a set of siblings. First cousins = the previous generation were siblings (that is, your mother or father was the sibling to their mother or father). Obviously second cousins can find a sibling match if they count back as far as their granddparents.
The number of times removed is how many generations separate you. If Barry Smith is your grandfather but is your cousin’s great grandfather, then a single generation separates you and you’re once removed. If he was your cousin’s great great grandfather then you’d be twice removed.
For the degree of cousinship, you always count along the shortest path. If it’s only one step back to get to the siblings in your line but seven steps back for your distant cousin then he’s a first cousin seven times removed, not a seventh cousin.
Link to a better chart.
Six times. He had to go one step back to match your one step back. The remainder is the degree of removal. You knew that really.
My kids are closer in age to the cousins once removed a generation below them - indeed, the older of the two has a couple of cousins once removed who are several years older - because my niece started cranking out babies before I did.
I guess I never thought about it before, but there is no distinction drawn between whether the removals are generations before or after. Learn something new everyday.
There’s a line in either “The Hobbit” or “TFoTR” where Bilbo says something along the lines of: … is my second cousin once removed, either way, if you get my meaning. I think it was Bilbo who said that.
I can’t imagine actually using these terms, personally. Of course, I only have two actual cousins and one first cousin, once removed (my dad’s cousin, who is only 2 years older than me). I’ve always called my "first cousin, once removed"either my cousin or my second cousin (depending on how lazy/ incorrect I feel), and in fact since my grandmother is her aunt, we’ve started calling her Aunt Grandma instead of Grandma Judy or Aunt Judy. I also never bother with the “step-” part of my brothers and sisters. Too lazy, and who cares? Most of the time it’s not pertinent anyway.
On an unrelated note, it only took until post #6 for the word “cousin” to begin looking completely nonsensical to me.
I know a lot of people who use the term “cousin” to refer to all degrees of cousinhood, and the same with aunt/uncle. For legal purposes, though, it does become important (especially if you want to marry one of them).
Well, most people have another name for the parent of your first cousin (other than first cousin once removed), but otherwise, that is the way it works.
This is a good chart.
However, I’ll stick to the way we do it in India. We don’t use the term cousin, it’s kind of useless even in English it seems. Who is going to remember all of this? Cousins are brothers and sisters, and if you must specify, well, I can differentiate between my aunts and uncles a little better than in English, like so:
Mother’s brother = mama
Father’s elder brother = thaya
So you just say “My Thaya’s son” and that applies to your father’s cousins’ kids, too.
It is confusing. I’m quite close to a second cousin once removed, but even though I know exactly how we’re related (his great-grandparents are my great-great-grandparents), I just call him “Cousin X” as an honorific. My third cousins (my generation) I just call by their first names.
The thing is, there are really different ways of parsing relationships depending on culture. I know next to nothing about the cultures in India, but going by the fact that there are something like 16 officially recognized languages I’ll bet there are a bunch of different kinship patterns used there. Your relatives probably know people from a different culture group that don’t necessarily use the same ones as them. Kinship terms can go from being pretty simple to having different ones for just about every relative you can think of, including for paternal or maternal relatives. Scroll down to Morgan’s classifications on this Wiki page for a brief overview and links to more detailed descriptions of the kinship patterns commonly used for classification in Anthropology.
Even among European languages where the cultures share a ton of similarities there are differences in kinship terms. It’s sometimes really difficult to translate these relationship words since there are cases where a term simply doesn’t exist, the relationship has a different connotation, or a relationship is succinctly described in a single word in one language while requiring a couple of sentences to explain in another. Things get really weird when you’re trying to find equivalencies between matrilineal and patrilineal patterns, or in dealing with languages where the speaker’s gender has an affect on terms.
The reason it can be confusing in English is because most of us don’t attach any importance to relationships farther away than cousin any more, so it’s too abstract to grasp easily. When I posted to that thread on “How close is too close” about my second cousins, I wasn’t sure without looking it up that that was the correct kinship term. But I guarantee that if inheritance commonly took things like your relationship to your great-great grandparent’s children by blood — not marriage — into account you’d know who your second and third cousins were and the removes would be important enough to remember too.
Bilbo and Frodo are third and fourth cousins, once removed either way, IIRC.
checks
Nope, it’s first and second, once removed either way:
I knew someone would come along with the correct quote. So, I suppose that must be from TFoTR, right?
Put your family tree in Geni and it will generate the relationships for you.
I love how your siblings are your zeroth cousins.