First Cousins and Second Cousins ...

Hi, Claire,

I'm having difficulty following your explanation, but the system Geni uses is definitely correctly by Western tradition. Your second cousins are anyone you share a great-grandparent with, and that's how Geni works. Second cousins are not "cousins of cousins," unless I'm misunderstanding your explanation.

There's a chart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin#Cousin_chart that does a nice job of visually explaining relationships.

That Wiki page is not quite correct when it comes to the description of "removed".

The "removed" statement which indicates a generation difference might also be a descendant of the focus person.

First cousin once removed is correctly a first cousin of one of your parents, but it can also be a first cousin of one of your children which is not another grandchild of you like a child of your son/daughter-in-laws sibling.

Ashley and Bjørn are correct. A second cousin most definitely is NOT "a cousin of a cousin."

A (first) cousin of a (first) cousin could be your first cousin, your sibling, or no relation at all, but never a second cousin.

Thanks, Bjørn. I didn't fully look at the removed relationships. You're right that there are additional scenarios it could cover. But it still demonstrates nicely that "first," "second," and so on are based on shared grandparents.

One of my anthropology classes was on worldwide kinship traditions. I think it was called "Anthropology of the Family." I'll see if I can dig out old texts/handouts and see if there's anything we could use on Geni.

Hopefully Geni, when they are done with the major release of profile connection revisions which includes undoing profiles merges, can come up with a better and more oral way of describing a relationship by replacing "removed" with two-level description, - first step is up/down to the common relative and then from there.

A simple example: First cousin once removed is better described as your mother or fathers first cousin

Maybe something they could do is put a little question mark next to all relationship paths leading to a "What does this mean?" pop-up or page. And that page could then explain how relationships work. That way, we wouldn't need to change the current wording, but we could expand on information for those who need the extra guidance.

What it mean might even confuse more because a simple relationship description like "first cousin once removed" can be described in so many ways and orally you would also use words telling the gender on both the middle and endpoint.

Even worse there might be specific words depending of the birth order for this person (like the a specific word if the oldest son).

It does however seem to be that Geni are working on relationship description because they leaked some help-texts into the translation system.

See http://www.geni.com/discussions/101502

Example: "For example, if the user we are refferring to is a male and relationship is [bold: his mother] and the phrase is '[bold: {example}]', then using the above key we will get: [bold: 'MOM is his mother.'], where MOM is his mom's name."

Don't know if this will help anyone - but it is how I came to understand 2nd cousin, 3rd cousin, etc. -- Suddenly made the numbers used totally sensible to me.

for a Nth cousin, you go up N generations, over to a sibling, and then down N generations.

e.g. - for a 2nd cousin, you go up 2 generations, over to a sibling, down 2 generations. (ie, up to your grandparent, over to sibling of your grandparent, then down 2 generations (to grandchild of that person))

Possibly not as helpful - because more awkwardly expressed, but perhaps it will help, or help someone to phrase it better:
For removeds -if AAA is the Nth Cousin X times removed of BBB - Nth is always the shorter path up to the siblings (that AAA and BBB are descended from, as above), and X is the difference between how many generations down AAA is versus how many generations down BBB is.

It is not confusing unless you confuse it. First cousin is either a male or female child of a sibling of your parent. A child of your mother's first cousin is still your first cousin but "removed" by that one generation. A cousin of your cousin is a 2nd cousin. A child of a cousin of your cousin is your 2nd cousin once removed.

"Removed" refers to generational separation. 1st, second, etc refers to degree of distance in the principle kinship relationship.

It is precisely from anthropology that we describe kinship relationships this way, at least in Western families. Some tribal societies - for instance the Navajo - use the terms 'cousin' or 'brother' etc., much more loosely, to refer to someone born of (maternal) or to (paternal) the same clan. Western nomenclature is exacting about blood relationships so it usually qualifies those which are adoptive or otherwise non-genetic. .

Geni are releasing the translation engine for relationships soon, and you can already find the documentation here:

http://www.geni.com/tr8n/help/tps
http://www.geni.com/tr8n/help/relationship_keys

I suggest that those who are responsible for the language portals/projects start a national discussion to agree on how to translate specific relationships, like I have done for Norwegian: http://www.geni.com/discussions/102416

Claire - a cousin of my cousin is me - am I my 2nd cousin? Are my siblings? Your usage is not the one I learned, not the one I am familiar with, and not the one others above say is correct in the Western tradition. My explanation above works for how Geni has been labelling the relationships.

I would be interested in reading your references for your usage.

@Clare: I'm sorry, but your understanding of "second cousin" is completely wrong. A "cousin of a cousin" is no relationship at all unless there is a common ancestor... and if there is, then your "cousin of a cousin" is either a first cousin or a sibling.

A "second cousin" means that you share a great-grandparent. The children of two first cousins are second cousins. Did you look at the Cousin Chart that Ashley posted?

Claire, in all my anthropology courses (including ones specializing in kinship) and in all my reading of kinship texts for the anthropology classes I professionally tutor and TA at the collegiate level, I have to say I have never found your definition anywhere. I honestly don't know where you're getting it from, but it's not anthropology.

I don't want to beat this to death, but:

>>First cousin is either a male or female child of a sibling of your parent.

Yes.

>>A child of your mother's first cousin is still your first cousin but "removed" by that one generation.

No. My mother's first cousin is my first cousin once removed. That is because my mother's first cousin's grandparent is my great-grandparent -- that extra step is the "removal."

The child of my mother's first cousin is my second cousin. That is because my mother's first cousin's child and I share the same great-grandparent -- no removal.

Cousin relations and removals all come down to where you connect through a grandparent. That is the guiding principle to follow.

>>A cousin of your cousin is a 2nd cousin.

No. A cousin of my cousin is either my first cousin OR not a relative at all, depending on which parent of my cousin the relationship goes through.

This is complicated, but let's use fake names in case an example helps make it clear:

Say your mother, Florence, has two sisters, Doris and Lucille. The children of Doris and Lucille are your first cousins; I think you agree with that. So in this case, Doris and Lucille's children are first cousins, and they are /also/ your first cousins.

Here's where your "cousin of a cousin" idea fails. Let's say Doris and her husband, James, have two children, Joe and Andy. James' brother Max also has two children, Sally and Sarah.

Joe and Andy are your cousins because your mother and their mother are sisters. Joe, Andy, Sally, and Sarah are also each other's cousins -- through their fathers. But Sally and Sarah -- your cousins' cousins -- aren't /your/ relatives whatsoever because that relationship goes through James, not your blood aunt Doris. So your definition cannot be correct, because obviously not all of your cousin's cousins can be your cousins to any degree.

Does that make sense, or did I complicate it more?

>>A child of a cousin of your cousin is your 2nd cousin once removed.

No. You can see from the above example why this statement is incorrect.

I am not sure if we can get you to agree with us on this, but I can say that a) your definition is not the anthropological one and b) the system on Geni is not going to change to fit your definition. So you may just need to agree to disagree on this one. :)

@ Bjorn... we're following your lead and have started the discussion on the Dutch portal yesterday. It's a challenging topic - but indeed about time that we can do this (if even English-speakers aren't too sure, imagine about non-English speakers on Geni :-) ).

We deliberately delayed such a discussion for Norwegian until we knew more about how Geni would solve such a challenge because we discovered that a word by word translation would not work well for Norwegian. The Estonians took that discussion for over a year ago, but "in the blind" on how to solve it.

Today we know that you can test on gender, if it is the maternal or paternal line and even test on birth order when making the translation, opening up for ideas we not even thought about, making it even more challenging.

The translation tools are not yet released, but we have made a temporary test tree to visualize the challenges and solutions and will use this tree to test the rules.

http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000014474485299

Unfortunately Geni have not (yet?) implemented my suggestion on having language dependent display names, so you have to make your own tree if you want something similar.

Ah, so. Well, correct me if I am misunderstanding what is being said but now what I'm hearing is the we don't include as 'family' people who are related to us by marriage.