An error that is made frequently on television news and TV shows and movies and books and by actual live people is the simplest of things: stepsiblings and halfsiblings. It’s amazing how often this is made.
Barack Obama has a half sister in Hawaii and several halfsiblings by his father. If his father’s wives had children by another husband or if his stepfather had children by another woman, those kids would be his stepchildren.
And, biologically and legally, that is a huge difference. You could marry your step-sibling, but not your half-sibling, and your half-sibling is far more likely to be able to donate you a kidney. Well, biologically, at least - in terms of emotional closeness it’s obviously not that simple.
Anyway, I have a sister who’s my niece and my aunt as well (really), so I beat all of you.
(Father adopted his second wife’s daughters then fathered a kid on one of them = my niece and my sister. Sister/niece later married my aunt’s ex-husband, which, OK is not a biological link, but I like it to complete the anecdote. 
She’s only about 4 years older than me, and we grew up together, so she’s my sister).
They’d be his stepsiblings.
Yeah! And there are some people who don’t know the difference between
1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol and regular ol’ 25-hydroxycholecalciferol! What a bunch of lusers! :rolleyes:
Seriously people. These are obscure genealogical technicalities which matter only in very rare circumstances. Of course most people don’t get them right, because they don’t need to, any more than most people need to know organic chemical nomenclature. Nineteen times out of twenty, just saying something like “distant cousin” is perfectly adequate, or, in the rare cases where more precision is required, maybe something like “my Dad’s cousin’s daughter’s daughter” (which is scarcely longer than, and more specific than “my second cousin once removed”).
These are not really two different things; they are two ends of the same relationship.
If A is the grandchild of B’s first cousin, then B is the cousin of A’s grandparent. The relationship between A and B is that of first cousins twice removed, and each is first cousin twice removed to the other.
We have different names for the two people in an uncle/aunt/nephew/neice relationship. I suspect this is because the genetic connection is close enough that there is usually a generation, or close to it, between the two people, and also they are usually close enough that their genders matter, hence we have gendered terms. But, e.g., second cousin is a much looser relationship - second cousins may be of the same generation, or separated bya good number of years. Also, they are not regularly close enough that gender matters. Hence we have the same ungendered term for those at both ends of the relationship.
As others have pointed out, the relationship between A and B is sufficiently distant that we generally don’t find it necessary to be precise about it. A and B may refer to one another as second cousins, and no practical harm is done, which is why the usage persists. If they came from a culture in which extended family relationships were signficant, they would speak more precisely about them.
Likewise, the reason why I know about first cousins, cousins removed, and the like, is that my family tree includes a woman who is my first cousin on one side of the family and a first cousin once removed on the other side of the family. Since she’s a generation older than me, though, when I was a child I always called her “Aunt.”
It doesn’t usually matter all that much.
I know the terms and how to use them, but if I say “this is John, my second cousin” or “this is Paul, my 1st cousin, once removed” you’re getting approximately the same amount of useful information - that John & Paul are related to me, but not all that closely. If you’re constructing my family tree, the distinction matters; for casual use, either is good enough.
A lot of relationship terms are ambiguous. “Brother-in-law” can mean either a spouse’s male sibling or a female sibling’s spouse. English uses the same word, “cousin,” for both male and female cousins, something other European languages regularly distinguish. The earliest use of the term also applied to nieces and nephews, so prescriptivists can’t get too picky about the usage without some arbitrariness. In vernacular English, as I learned it, “second cousin” means a descendant of a great-aunt or great-uncle, with the terms “first cousin once removed” and “second cousin once removed” reserved for rare issues when clarification was needed. Kind of like English used to use “cousin” for a broad range, and then “cousin German” when we needed to specify first cousin.
The OED says “The term second cousin, is also loosely applied to the son or daughter of a first cousin, more exactly called a (first) cousin once removed.” [Side question: why that first comma?]
It can even be the husband of your wife’s sister (i.e. your wife’s brother-in-law or husband’s brother-in-law is your brother in law as well). For example, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek are referred to as “brothers-in-law” in many accounts (their wives were sisters).
In Old English the word cousin was very vague and basically meant “relative”. In morality plays and even in Shakespeare “cousin” can be applied to a cousin, nephew, brother, uncle, etc…
Yes, I was reared by my “uncle” for several years, but that was just something he made me call him.
Did he have you pinned to the ground with your arm twisted behind your back at the time?
:rolleyes: You have never had someone in a position of authority make you use a certain title before or is everyone just bro’ and sweetcheeks? Don’t be willfully obtuse.
Don’t be a thin skinned offenderati on other people’s behalf. I was referencing this, sweetcheeks.
It’s all good. I thought Koxinga was touching on my diction and assuming that my uncle was a kidder.
Because of lower mobility, there are lots of 2nd- and 3rd-cousin relationships in rural Thailand. Thais tend to say just “somehow related” for 2nd-cousins, and “not related” for 3rd-cousins (even after the relationship is demonstrated).
Since the Thai word for “cousin” is “look-pee look-nong”, meaning “older sibling’s child, younger-sibling’s child” and since grandchild and great-grandchild also have 1-syllable words, it would seem easy to create words for 2nd cousin (“laan-pee laan-nong”) or even 1st cousin 1x removed (“laan-pee look-nong”). But rural Thais look baffled when I try to explain such constructed words!
There are lots of weird relationships here. As just one example, three neighbor couples came from three families: Mr. A married Miss B, B’s brother married Miss C, and C’s brother married Mr. A’s sister. The offsprings of the three couples are all each others’ cousins, but with three different ways.
At least Thai doesn’t have this problem. There is a special word like “in-law” applied to one’s siblings’ spouses, but my wife’s siblings are called “wife’s brother” or just “brother”. Logical, I think, since the closeness of man and wife makes each other’s siblings intimate in a way that siblings’ spouses are not.
Rereading this I see an objection: My wife’s brother would use the “in-law” word for me. But intimacy need not be fully symmetric. We have an obligation and desire to embrace each others’ families, yet the sibling’s spouse may still seem slightly an outsider.
(I tried to add this note via Edit, but barely missed the 5-minute window. Is that window invariant? Can I ask the Moderators to give me a longer window, perhaps … 7 minutes?)
I see your chart and raise you by a level…
sheeesh…I guess from now on I’ll just call them “kin folks”.
tsfr
I agree…try explaining all this to a 7 year old.
My wife and I were both previously married and have kids from our first marriages and a daughter together… so she has half brothers and sisters and our other kids are step brothers and sisters to each other… Daughter finally understands how that works. Then you get into how she has cousins from both sides but they aren’t really the cousin to some of her brothers or sisters.
Then add on top of that, I am the youngest of 7 kids. There is a 17 year span between my oldest sister and me and I am only 5 years older than my oldest niece. There is a 33 year span between the oldest niece and my daughter and my oldest niece has a daughter who is the same age (3 weeks differance in age) as my daughter and they are in the same class at school. So my daughter calls my sister Aunt (correct) but she also calls her cousin 33 years to her elder Aunt out of age respect ( not correct ) and she calls her second cousin (or is it first cousin once removed) cousin ( sort of correct )…sheesh
Now…throw in my extended family on my Dads side where I am the youngest of 43 grandchildren (of Dads parents) and there is a 35 year span of my generation and the generations are all age inner-twined…
Its a mess!!!
So dear daughter… they’re just cousins…leave it at that unless they are alot older than you and have kids your age…then call them Aunt or Uncle because its respectful and in a room full of family, they are somebodies Aunt or Uncle and as confusing as it all is…nobody will know different.