Last night, I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding - the main character noted that she had 27 first cousins (first cousins are the children of the siblings of either of your parents), with the clear implication that that was an unusually large number. I’ve got 26 first cousins. How about you?
P.S. I think this is my first poll!
P.P.S. Feel free to make cousin-related comments below (it’s okay to do more than just vote)
Most of mine are dead at this point from one thing or another (quite a few were significantly older than me - their children are my age or older!). And I never had many to begin with on dad’s side (“thanks” for that, Nazis). I suspect it might be zero at this point, but there could be a couple out there on mom’s side I’ve lost contact with who could still be around.
Just a ‘normal’ amount for me. However, if you go up a single generation on my Italian side (so, my dad’s cousins), there’s a ton. No idea how many but IIRC, my grandfather had something like 9 siblings and my grandmother was from a big family as well (most died before I was born).
For a lot of them, the only interaction I’ve ever had with them is at funerals.
And, like the movie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and like Joey’s sisters in Friends and like Goodfellas, we seemingly only have about a dozen names to choose from so there’s a lot of repeats.
Uncle Charlie? Which one? The one that lives in [neighboring city]? The race car driver? The one in the mafia?
I swear I can talk to a random Italian person in Milwaukee and it’s not uncommon to find out I’m related to them in one way or another.
Six on my mom’s side, 22 on my dad’s, so 28 total. I have two step cousins on my mom’s side (both of her siblings remarried people with one kid). So i guess you could say 30… but i don’t.
Eta: I’m surprised my mom didn’t have more siblings, as her parents were old school Polish Catholic. My dad’s parents were protestant South Dakota farmers who just kept popping out a new farm hand every two years or so. Eight little farm hands total.
Five biologically, seven if you count my uncle’s two stepdaughters. (From two different marriages; I grew up thinking of one of them as my cousin, but there isn’t actually a current relationship connecting us, and the other one’s mother is currently married to my uncle but I’ve only met her daughter two or three times in my life, and certainly not before we were both adults.)
I’ve got six, three on my mother’s side and three on my father’s. My kids have 0 - my brother never had kids and my wife is an only child. My grandkids have two each.
I picked 26-30, but that’s just a guess. It may well be higher. My dad was the youngest of seven, and his siblings each had multiple children. So, they are all older than I, plus they lived all over the country. The family is originally from Chicago, but I had cousins that grew up in Arizona and Alaska. Couldn’t name them all if I tried.
I don’t know exactly, but either 11 or 12. My father had four siblings and my mother three, much more than the average today, so I have five cousins from my mother’s side and six from my father’s, even though there are two notorious bachelors among my uncles, one on each side. But here’s the thing: there’s a family rumor that one of these bachelors, the youngest brother of my father, fathered a boy in Sweden about 50 years ago. This uncle is still alive, and I could ask him if this is true, but he’s kind of the black sheep of the family and I really don’t like to.
Well, it depends on who you count. I have two who have died, one long-lost from an uncle who sowed his oats and the mother wanted nothing to do with him afterwards (but his daughter looked him up once she came of age), and one by adoption. I’m inclined to count the two dead ones, but it seems unfair to count both the long-lost one and the adopted one (either we’re counting raised-as-family, or we’re counting genetically-family, not both), which brings the total to 34.
Almost all of them are on my mom’s side: She had ten siblings, and several of them had large families, too. And most of those cousins have children and even grandchildren of their own: My (now-dead) grandparents are well into the triple digits of descendants, by now.
I had 11. Six on my father’s side and five on my mother’s side. Two on my father’s side have died. Last I knew none on my mother’s side has, but they grew up in California and me in the East so we never were close. Four of the five are/were older than I, and might have passed away.
Dad was the oldest of 7; Mom, the oldest of 8. All of my aunts/uncles got married and had kids. On Dad’s side, I have 17 first cousins, all of whom are still alive. On my Mom’s side, I had 22 first cousins, two of whom have passed.
So, a total of 39, 37 still living. And, via the medium of email, I keep in touch with each and every one of them.
I don’t know how to answer that. On my Mother’s side, just one. On my Father’s side, he was adopted, but by his own Auntie, so we know who his biological siblings are, and their kids are technically my cousins, the number then becomes four I think, but in the family he was adopted into he had no true or adoptive “siblings” so there are no official cousins there. However, he did have a kind of faux-sister who lived with the family, but was not adopted, and she had a daughter, but it was her kids we hung out with most, as they were my age, but that would be second-cousins, and even then they are not biologically related to me at all.
I have 12 but my parents both come from small families - they each have two siblings. My mother has 40 first cousins and according to that movie Greeks are very similar to Italians in naming practices. One side of my mother’s family is full of Joseph/Josephine/Steven/Stephanies - two guesses on what my great- grandparent’s names were.
My parents were both only children who migrated to the other side of the world. So, until adulthood, family gatherings for me consisted of just my parents and my two brothers.
36, all from my father’s side. My mom was an only child like me. 31 are still living. Some I’ve not spoken to in decades, some I saw just the other day.
I have eleven, plus one half-cousin that 23-n-me says exists, but who has never answered my in-mails. Oh well, it’s too bad, I’d love to know them!
My father, OTOH, had more than 30 cousins (Irish Catholic.) My daughter has four. Her Dad was an only child, and my one sibling just happened to have a larger brood.