I’ve just discovered that I have a 3rd cousin 7 times removed.
Haven’t got a clue as to exactly how we’re related. Our family is huge – many hundreds of relatives scattered all over the U. S., Canada, and Europe.
Can anyone provide a link to a site that defines the definitive relationships between family members? (Preferably with graphic or chart representations, not just descriptions …) The 10 sites or so that I have found seem to contradict each other regarding relationships beyond “second cousin”.
But just to elaborate a bit, standard nomenclature as to how two people are related to each other depends on the relationship to their common ancestor. If you share the same grandparents, you’re first cousins. Great-grandparents, 2nd cousin. gg-grandparents, 3rd cousins. A nice rule of thumb is that you can take the number of “greats” in the grandparent designation, add 1, and that gives you the number, or degree of cousin that you are.
However, one needs to count for generational differences. If your grandparents are another person’s great grandparents, then you were first cousins with that person’s parent, and you’re first cousins once removed to them.
Etc. etc.
Half siblings mean you can add the term “half” into the relationship. But typing “first half cousin twice removed” gives me a headache.
It sounds very unlikely for two “third cousins 7 times removed” to be alive at the same time.
If you are 3rd cousins, you must be related through the great-great-grandparent of one of you. If you are 7 times removed, then the great-great-grandparent of one of the individuals in the relationship must be the 10-times-great grandparent of other individual, or about 140 years apart in time if we figure a generation time of 20 years.
I think the person who told you this is confused about how they are stating the relationships. It is more likely that you might be 3rd cousins four times removed.
The simplest way to explain the ordinal numbers used to specify cousinship is that the ancestors of Nth cousins were siblings N generations back. First cousins have parents who were siblings; second cousins have grandparents who were siblings; third cousins, great-grandparents, and so on.
Removals indicate that the two people are of different generations, the ordinal of removal being the degree of difference in generation.
So your second cousin twice removed is the grandchild of your second cousin. His/her great-great-grandparent is your grandparent. (Your child is your SC2R’s third cousin once removed; do you see why?)
I might help if you were able to describe to us what the relationship of each of you is to the ancestor you have in common: e.g. “My great-great-grandfather is person X’s great-great-great-great-grand uncle,” for example.
In the (admittedly) few, short and sparse e-mails that we’ve traded, we’re still not entirely certain whether we share a common ggg grandfather or gggg grandfather as the common ancestor. I’m now reasonably certain that the 7 times removed must be incorrect, as you pointed out earlier, but as I study the chart on the website (link above) I’m now reasonably certain that beginning to doubt my sanity would be a good plan as well.
As I’ve gone through the records available to me, it appears that she is the ggg granddaughter of my father’s paternal gg grandmother’s brother. (wait a minute, let me count that again …) Okay.
She believes herself to be the gggg granddaughter of my father’s paternal ggg grandfather’s brother. Hold on again … Okay.
Frankly, I think there is a missing link in the documentation. (No evolutionary jokes here, please.) Please understand that this goes back quite a ways. The ‘Lucy’ surname (also spelled Lucee) goes back a number of centuries, and this link between myself and my (whatever) cousin (whatever) times removed is, at this point, tenuous at best.
The point of the OP is an attempt to deal with my being unable to grasp the nomenclature of these relation ships. I’ve been studying the chart at the link given above, and according to the table, my grandson is also my first cousin once removed. In my mind, this is clearly horseshit. (Pardon me, make that horse pucky …)
Am I missing some vital rule here that would clear this up?
I gave up on the degree of cousin relationships not long after I started researching my family trees. It’s confusing and unnecessary, IMO. I let Family TreeMaker figure the whole thing out for me and save on my Excedrin bill.
Your father’s paternal gg grandmother is YOUR ggg grandmother (let’s call her Grace to make it easier). Grace had a brother, call him George. Your cousin is George’s ggg granddaughter. Grace and George obviously had parents, let’s call them Pete and Patty. Pete and Patty are gggg grandparents to both you AND your cousin. So you are both six generations removed from Pete and Patty and are therefore fifth cousins. No “removed,” since you are the same number of generations away from your common ancestor.
Now, if you and your cousin (let’s call her Celeste) each have a child, those two children will be sixth cousins to each other. YOU will be Celeste’s child’s fifth cousin once removed. Celeste will be YOUR child’s fifth cousin once removed.
Frankly, I gave up on Excedrin and I’m moving on to more exoctic designer drugs.
I’m almost ready to join you in giving up on the degree of relationships thingy, except that everyone I discuss (heavy on the ‘cuss’ part) this with seems to insist on using the nomenclature and I end up getting completely lost …
[Geneololgy sometimes just barely stops short of becoming a contact sport. I’m considering writing a book about all the nuts that keep falling out of our family tree, however, I have several family members who keep threatening to put my body in a place where forensic science will not help in the identification of the remains. Imagine that …]
Seriously, we have some very interesting characters in the ancestral tree that have both humorous and historical value. Members of the family always love to hear about these ancestors, but really go ballistic at the thought of making such stories public … seems everbody likes to hear about the black sheep, until they find out they’re related! :smack:
Well, it certainly indicates that you might have just possibly been confused by the chart.
In this case, let us make you the COMMON ANCESTOR (1,1) on the chart.
Your child would be (1,2) (son or daughter) and their child (1,3) would be your grandson. From there, it is not possible for your grandson to be any sort of cousin to you (outside some odd combination of marriages that we really want to avoid).
One example of First Cousin Once Removed appears in Column 4, Row 3. The parents of that person appear in either Row 1 or Column 1. In this case, one parent (Column 4, Row 1) is the Great Grandson or -Daughter of the COMMON ANCESTOR and one parent (Column 1, Row 3) is the Grandson or -Daughter.
To take it to your example:
gggg granddaughter of a brother makes her the ggggg grandaughter of the COMMON ANCESTOR.
ggg granddaughter of a brother makes you the gggg granddaughter of the COMMON ANCESTOR.
Put your ancestors in Row 1, going across the top of the chart:
the gggg granddaughter is Column 7, Row 1.
Put her ancestors in Column 1, going down the left of the chart:
So the ggggg granddaughter on the chart is Column 1, Row 8
The intersection, going down the column and across the row is Column 7, Row 8: Fifth Cousin Once Removed.
The number of “cousin” is the number of equal generations away from the common ancestor and the number of “removes” is the number of unequal generations. (This explanation is marred because we don’t start counting cousins until the second generation, if we used the word siblings instead of cousins, the numbers would match exactly–but trhen the language would be competely different.)
And, as MLS caught and I missed, you threw your father into the equation, which puts you at the same number of "g"s away from the COMMON ANCESTOR, placing you at Column 1, Row 8, which I calculate to be sixth cousins.
However, regardless of my calculations or those of MLS, you should now have enough information to calculate it for yourself.
)