Now my father, God rest his soul, did talk about this very matter. And I have to say, I do still tend to believe him. Though I have to point out, there may be widespread ignorance about the topic.
My cousin had a boy, in December of 1993, specifically. Nick. What is his son in relation to me?
My father always maintained he was my first cousin once removed. But everyone else I talk to is positive he’s my second cousin.
So which is it? And is it perhaps open to debate (though I don’t know how that’d work)?
Your father is correct. If the new parent is your first cousin (the two of you are the offspring of siblings), then your first cousin’s offspring is your first cousin once removed. Your child and your first cousin’s child are second cousins. Wikipedia’s article on cousins has this to say (hope a paragraph counts as fair use):
“Degrees and removals are separate measures used to more precisely describe the relationship between cousins. Degree measures the separation, in generations, from the most recent common ancestor(s) to a parent of one of the cousins (whichever is closest), while removal measures the difference in generations between the cousins themselves, relative to their most recent common ancestor(s). To illustrate usage, a secondcousin is a cousin with a degree of two; there are three (not two) generations from the common ancestor(s). When the degree is not specified, first cousin is assumed. A cousin " once removed " is a cousin with one removal. When the removal is not specified, no removal is assumed.”
Aha! We have another recent thread around here somewhere, in which we were discussing this. We noted that siblings are “zeroth cousins” and an uncle/nephew relation is “zeroth cousins once removed”. I mentioned that I had seen a chart somewhere listing all these relations in a matrix form. This table is what was thinking of!
I reject this. I don’t care if some bureaucratic policy wonk or linguistic “expert” has made this claim. No siblings consider themselves as “cousins” to any degree and no English speaker uses these terms.
You’re right, of course, about the terminology that we commonly do and don’t use. The notions like “zeroth cousins” and “zeroth cousins once removed” are descriptive terms that describe how these relations stand with respect to one another, as in the “consanguinity” chart that @Dewey_Finn posted.
The entire second column in that chart are the “zeroth cousins”, and the entire row beginning with “Person” are the “zero times removed”.
The recent thread I mentioned, and the particular post (by @Chronos), is this:
Searching this Board for the phrase “zeroth cousin” finds about 15 prior mentions of the phrase.
We don’t even need to get into technicalities. I have a sister. If I told you that there were an event that all of my cousins would be attending, would you expect that my sister would be there? Would you expect that I myself would be there?
I would expect you and your sister to be there, but not because you are a part of the subset of “cousins” but because such an important event that would cause all of your cousins to attend would likely attract you and your siblings to attend.
But seriously, you don’t speak that way do you? If you are introducing your sister to someone, you don’t say, “This is my sister and my cousin Jane.”
For me, no. Context matters, but saying your cousins are going to be there does not include your sister, your parents, your uncles, etc. If your sister doesn’t live in town, for example, or you’re not close to her, etc., then I would not expect her to be there unless you explicitly said so. A sister is not, in common language in my experience, considered a cousin. (I’ve heard close cousins referred to as brothers and sisters , though, in certain cultures.)
If I heard someone say all the cousins are getting together this weekend for a barbque I’d assume my brothers and sister were invited. That is everyone of my genaration and their kids.
As for the zeroth cousin statement, no its not at all anything people say, but it did help explain the chart better. I found the chart a little confusing until the “concept” of a zeorth cousin was explained.
I don’t discount the concept if it is helpful (as it may be) to explain the confusion in society about first or second cousins and once removed distinctions and so forth. But my sister is not my zeroth cousin or any type of cousin. No English speaker talks that way and I reject it like your grandfather spitting tobacco on his front porch. That harshly.
Right, all of us use the same term to refer to the same set of people. “The cousins” is the set of all of my grandparents’ grandchildren. Which includes both my sister and myself.
But do you really use those words in everyday speaking? I’m honestly asking because I find that astounding. I have never heard of anyone referring to his sister as also his cousin (WV jokes aside. )
