Pop Quiz

[desoto_hia873]

If your grandmother is someone else's great-grandmother, what does that make you and the someone else to one another?

What if the grandmother/great-grandmother had two husbands, and you're descended from one man and the someone else from the other?

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

First cousins once removed. I don't think there's a word for the latter, but I presume it'd mean you're half-first cousins once removed.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

So how does the once-removed thing work? I've never been able to figure that out.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

The 'removed' bit is the number of generations between you.

gen 1 - original person
gen 2 - children
gen 3 - grandchildren
gen 4 - great-grandchildren

If you're part of generation 4, the great grand-children, and someone else is a grandchild, they're in generation 3, which is once removed from you.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

Okay, that makes sense. I know what a first cousin is, but what's a second cousin?

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Same great-grandparents.

(I did my mum's family tree this summer. I already knew that until the last 100 years practically everybody in Ireland married their cousins to keep farms in the family but it's still weird to see that your great-great grandfather is also your great-great-great grandfather, or a couple with only one set of grandparents between them...)

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

So saying "once removed" is like saying first-and-a-half cousins?

If I could follow my father's family tree back to Ireland, I guess I'd find the same thing. And this on top of the subsequent generations of inbreeding in Newfoundland. That would make it all extra-scrambly, and I might find out that I'm my own great-aunt or something. :-)

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

Basically, yeah. Your first cousin's children will be your first cousins once removed. THEIR kids would be your first cousins twice removed. Your kids and your cousin's kids would be second cousins.

Oh... here, take a look at this table: http://www.borisbrooks.com/genealogy/cousins.htm

It gives a handy chart for figuring this sort of thing out.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

Now that's a handy table! ::bookmarks:: I've always wondered what to call my cousin's kids. Well, "Conor" and "Erin" come to mind, since those are their names, but you know what I mean. :-)

[deathisyourart.livejournal.com]

I thought that your second cousin was your cousin's children?

of course, I also thought the answer to this riddle was aunt once removed, not first cousin once removed.... *is confused*

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Second Cousins are what your cousin's kids are to your kids.

For instance, I live next to My Cousin Up the Hill; his sons, Twitchy Sportskid and Screaming Monster are my first cousins once removed, and they are second cousins to my offspring Miss Perfect and the Manchild.

Julia, what I need is a word for my cousin's cousins on the other side of the family and my cousin's ex's child by another man...

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

This stuff also makes my head asplodey, so that's why I asked my wise LJ flist.

It looks to me like first cousin, once removed could also be aunt, once removed, but I've never actually heard anyone use that terminology.

[bookishwench.livejournal.com]

In the first case, I think it could be parent/child or aunt or uncle/niece or nephew.

I believe the second case would include the word half in there. I think.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

In the first case, I think it could be parent/child or aunt or uncle/niece or nephew.

Yes, you are quite right--that would be the obvious case, wouldn't it? And yet I somehow missed the obvious. :-) But then, I knew that the two dogs (as the case was) were only distantly related.