The cousin sidebar in this thread got me curious about this. I am not a genealogy expert by any means, but have enough family members who are quite into it that it’s a pretty frequent topic of conversations at family get-togethers, so the differing terminology I was not familiar with surprised me.
It seems like having a solidly agreed upon common language would be beneficial for those who are really into the topic, but I can’t seem to find anything established as THE source. I imagine it would differ culturally as I know that some countries use different metrics for relationships, but those of you into genealogy, is there a reference source that is sort of the standard within the genealogy world?
Beyond “common” terminology such as “first cousin once removed”, the only thing that immediately comes to mind as a genealogist-only terminology might be the ahnentafel number, a handy numbering system that uses a specific person as number 1, his father is 2, mother 3, and then expands historically from there.
I more meant for the “common” terminology though - like in that thread where it seemed that what is a “first cousin twice removed” for some is a “second grand aunt” for others. I was curious to look into it more to see how that works, but couldn’t seem to find a definitive source.
I’ve been doing genealogy for years, and there are no definite sources. All the US and English genealogy software I’ve encountered do use the X-cousin-Y-removed system, and I’ve never encountered the “Second Aunt” idea before now. But in Norwegian we stick with X-th-cousin’s-grandchild <-> grandpa’s-Xth-cousin. And other countries use the systems of their cultures.
And as for numbering systems like ahnetafel numbering, there are a bunch.
Not everything is “officially” resolved. You sometimes hear someone saying “I’m a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson.” Um, what do you mean by “direct”?
This is due to people saying things like “I’m a descendant of Abraham Lincoln.” No, you’re not. There are no proven living descendants of Lincoln.
Somehow people think that it’s okay to use “descendant of” to mean “This person exists somewhere high up in my family tree.”