In case you ever needed to know…..Fun Friday.

I’ve been pottering around with this genealogy caper for several years now and the names and terms for relationships still confuse me 😊

Seeing the generations on a pedigree chart is fine, you add your name and then for your direct lines you identify your Mum and Dad and Grandparents and then as you get to know more names and dates you can add Greats plus…..if you’re really lucky ….Great Greats or 2 x Gt as they are sometimes referred to.

Then comes the tricky bit – the sideways moves aka the extended family.  Aunts Uncles Cousins…..they all get recorded elsewhere. In exercise books, scraps of paper, various family charts or maybe online genealogy sites.

Trying to place who relates to whom has always been a challenge to me  I know I’m not the brightest spark but honestly listening to / reading posts online where these family discussions take place leaves me feeling dim sometimes. There are loads of graphs and charts out there that explain these relationships but after a while all the little boxes seem to merge into one.  Until I found this one.

You and your cousin share grandparents, you and your 2nd cousin (that is a grandchild of a Gt aunt/uncle) share Gt grandparents AND you and your 3rd cousin ( a Gt grandchild of a Gt Gt aunt or uncle ….who is a brother or sister of one of your Gt grandparents) share GtGt grandparents.  Are you with me still??

Then there is Removed (see Ancestry ‘Understanding Kinship Terms’)

In cousin relationships, the term removed indicates the separation of a generation. My first cousin is of the same generation as I am, so my first cousin once removed would be either my parent’s first cousin or my first cousin’s child. Since twice removed indicates a difference of two generations, my first cousin twice removed would be either my grandparent’s first cousin or the grandchild of my first cousin (as I am two generations younger than my grandparent’s first cousin and two generations older than my first cousin’s grandchild).

The online companies who test DNA samples provide you with matches to other clients  registered with them…..up to 4th cousins and further.  Trying to find the MRCA aka most recent common ancestor  or ‘who you both are actually related to’ can be fun.  If you both have enough information to share.  Because you need to be able to go back 5/6 generations.

See I told you it was FUN 😊