How can there be such a concept as a “fraternal” grandparent?
I’ve always said “Paternal”.
The subject came up when I hijacked another thread— in which somebody referred to his “fraternal grandmother”, and I said “Huh?”. Then another poster simply answered matter-of-factly: “Fraternal grandparents are your father’s parents. Maternal grandparents are your mom’s parents.”
No thank you. I’m still gonna say “Paternal”.
Now, you don’t have to be a Latin scholar to know that :
Frater means brother
Pater means father
After all, in everyday language, we don’t say that college students join “paternity houses”.
And similarly, unmarried pregnant women don’t go to court and demand “fraternity” tests.
Some quick googling shows that there is some confusion about the phrase “fraternal grandparent”, but that it is used in genealogy sites. (Who ought to know better, if you ask me.)
I still say “huh?” …
Why did I study Latin if everybody is going to abuse it?
Lots of people will also tell you very pacifically how your opposed to axe a question, too. Doesn’t mean they’re right. The only uses of it I can find are by users in Q&A or message boards on genealogy websites, so I think the likeliest answer is they’re simply mistaken. I don’t find any dictionaries, encyclopedias, or even genealogy authorities using the word in that manner.
It’s Paternal, and I’ll go down swinging on that one.
From the other thread: never heard of fraternal grandparents. And it wasn’t quite like that there, but the responding poster was the same as the original.
It’s a mute point, because irregardless of the meaning, your grandparents are literally your twin brothers.
As thelurkinghorror said, the only poster who supported that use of fraternal in the other thread was aceplace57. I don’t think there’s any ambiguity here; fraternal is wrong. Paternal is the word aceplace57 wanted.
A fraternal grandparent would be a grandparent who was also your brother. Perhaps time traveling, or crazy marriages (if you count in-law grandparents) could satisfy this condition.
If your father when back in time and got his grandmother (one of your great grandmothers) pregnant, and if that child then grows up to one day to father your grandfather (your dad’s dad or heck even your mom’s dad), then you’d have a fraternal grandparent, as your grandpa would also be your brother (half brother, anyway).
I almost follow that, but I do/will/had (loop dependant) only barely pass Temporal Sociology at the Academy. I will have done much better on the Applied Chronometrics exams.
I think you could crowbar a usage of the term in the case of half-siblings somehow, where different parents would be involved. But that doesn’t sound like the way it was used, and I’ve never heard it used the way I’ve described.
There’s a famous country song which is also a little hard to follow:
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There are a couple more verses, which are funny–but I can’t post 'em here without getting arrested by the copywrite police, or else spanked by the mods
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.and–the final climactic final lines are
I wonder if this was coined by people who are etymologically impaired, and figured that since maternal shares an initial letter with mother, the equivalent term for father has to start with an F. :smack:
I’d always heard fraternal grandparents were your dad’s parents. A quick google search shows many pages of people listing fraternal grandparents in ancestry pages. I guess what I hear in everyday conversation might not be correct.
I don’t think people should be too hard on you. It does make a small amount of sense, in that fraternal has something to do with male, and words mean what we hear people around us using them to mean. You’re certainly not the only one who’s ever made that error. But now you know. As the cliché goes, you’ve learned something today; must be a good day.
