As I don’t have siblings, and my cousins are all older than me, I have always referred to my cousins’ kids as my nephews/nieces.
Is this correct? Or is there another term for this relationship?
I have always called them cousins–I believe it would be 1st cousins, once removed. Your kids and those kids would be second cousins to each other.
I am wondering your ethnicity, though. My husband, whose parents are from India, would call them nieces and nephews, I think. His dad’s cousins are his uncles, etc. I don’t know if it is a translation thing from Marathi or a cultural distinction–they use the word ‘uncle’ for everyone in the generation ahead of them, etc.
According to this website , they would be your first cousins-once removed.
Grit
Interesting—well, no, I don’t have any particularly exotic nationality. Ethnically, I’m 1/4 Russian Jew, 1/4 Czech, and 1/2 Norwegian. Never been outside of America, although I like to think of myself as fairly well-traveled within our borders. So it’s not a translation issue, just that I can never keep the names for those relations straight.
Thanks for the link and the info! I definitely need a page like that in my bookmarks. I’ve never been able to keep those straight.
Cecil has spoken on this topic, and agrees that they are first cousins once removed.
My cousins’ little WASP offspring, are refered to as “first cousins once removed”, or “cousins” for short. My Filipina girlfriend, however, goes by “Tita Pa” to her cousins’ kids, “Tita” being Tagalog for aunt and “Pa” (pronounced “puh”) being short for Patricia. AFAIK, her family recognizes the difference between siblings’ kids and cousins’ kids, but use the “Tita” or “Tito” labels as a show of respect to the elder relative.
jeevwoman is right. In India they call cousins “brother” and “sister.” So by Indian logic, your cousins’ kids are your nieces and nephews.
My father’s first cousin seemed more like his brother and was close to his age. I felt awkward calling him by his first name. Eventually, I called him Uncle Jack and that seemed to please us both. Legally we were first cousins once removed.
Despite what Cecil may have asserted, he is only presenting the mainstream cultural perspective.
In my undergraduate cultural anthropology course, this topic came up and the professor indicated that there were American subcultures who would use “second cousin” for this relationship, and possibly other terms that I don’t remember. She (the prof) was collecting relational terms from various locales.
Too bad my memory doesn’t contain any more specific details…
