Can anyone recommend a website that helps you learn how to label complex family relations?
Asked by
keobooks (
14327
)
October 16th, 2015
For decades, to make things simpler in my family, I’ve always just called any distant relatives my age cousins and anyone my parent’s age or older aunts and uncles. This is confusing my daughter and she keeps asking me specific questions. She wants to know what exact relationship she has with my cousin’s daughter, or my father’s cousin’s grandson. I have no idea who’s a second cousin and who’s a first cousin once removed.
Is there a website that helps sort this out?
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Ancestry.com can do this and even search for more relatives but it is fee based to do so.
@cruiser Ancestry.com does have a wealth of information, but anyone should think twice before providing credit card info. The website will charge for “extra” services and go on charging month after month. If someone wants to be a paying customer, that person should use a virtual or temporary form of payment.
I am not an expert in this, but here is a general idea of how things work. I am assuming we are talking about people related by birth rather than through marriage. That means that you and whoever you are trying to relate to have a common ancestor. Determine how many generations you both are from the common ancestor. If you are both at least two generations away then you are cousins of one sort or another. If you are both two generations away (have common grandparents) then you are first cousins. If one of you is two generations away and the other is three, then you are first cousins once removed. In general, the person who is fewer generations away determines what number cousin you are and the number of years beyond that for the other person is how many removed you are.
I am not sure how great aunts and great great aunts, etc. work, but it seems these are all cases where one person is a direct descendant of the common ancestor.
@keobooks – Our mutual Askville and Facebook friend Madelyn can help you, too. (Petey’s mom, the friend of Jack Russell rescues.)
In the case of relationship between your daughter and your cousin’s daughter, both have your grandparents as common ancestors and both are 3 generations away from this common ancestor, making them second cousins.
In the second case, your father and his cousin are two generations away from a common ancestor. Your daughter and the cousin’s grandson are both an additional two generations away, so both are four generations away from the common ancestor, making them third cousins.
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