BS: A Question of Relativity

Subject: A Question of Relativity
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 10:21 AM

I've been doing a little genealogical research, and discovered that my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and his brothers were famous longhunters in Tennessee and Kentucky. One of the brothers settled for awhile at Mansker's Station, which is a site where Mister and I volunteer on a regular basis. Sort of exciting!

My question is this: is the brother of my gggggggrandfather, my gggggg-uncle, or what? How do you figure out how you're related to people that far back? And how do you figure cousins, and all that? I've never understood it. Any enlightenment appreciated.

Cheers---- Kim

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 10:25 AM

Yes, the sibling of your great-to-the-nth-parent is your great-to-the-(n-1)th uncle or aunt. Thus your parents' sibs are your aunts and uncles, your grandparents' sibs are your great-aunts and great-uncles. The children of your aunts and uncles are your cousins. Children of cousins are second cousins, grandchildren of cousins are third cousins, and so on. The "once removed" has to do with generations: my second cousin's child is my second cousin once removed, but third cousin to my children. Luckily in English you don't have to worry about parallel and cross cousins (children of same- and different-sexed siblings, respectively)!

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Rich_and_Dee
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 10:27 AM

Hi,

There's a relationship chart at this address which might help you out:

http://www.cswnet.com/~sbooks/genealogy/cousins/cousins.htm

Also, and I'm NOT endorsing this, I know the Family Tree Maker software has a relationship chart. Once you enter in everyone on your tree, you click a button and the application determines everyone's relationship to whomever you chose.

Rich

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 10:35 AM

Mrrzy, that makes my head spin! ;-) (I am still enjoying my cookbook, by the way.)

Thanks Rich. I will check that out.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 10:39 AM

It gets worse in other languages - In Hungarian, for instance, there is no word for brother or for sister. They have words that mean sibling, elder brother, elder sister, younger brother, and younger sister, and twin. If you want to specify gender you HAVE to specify age difference too!

Why, in English, is there no female equivalent of Avuncular (like and uncle)? I'm pretty sure there's a male equivalent of uxorious (overly invested in one's wife), but I can't remember it right now...

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 10:52 AM

English is a very impoverished language when it comes to this kind of thing.

It's when it gets to non blood-relations that the terms break down. Your brother in law might be the man who is married to your sister, or it might be the brother of your wife. And if you have both sorts of brothers - law, there's no term to describe the relationship between them.

Again it's the same word, "uncle" for the man who is married to your mother sister, who is no blood relation, as it is for the man who is your mother's brother, who is a close blood relation.

And there aren't any terms at all for the people who would be in-laws except that the partners in question aren't actually married. "Out-laws" perhaps?

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 11:34 AM

There's an interesting way to look at relationships caused by marriage- or at least it entertained me: your brother-in-law is, by law, your brother. Your mother-in-law is, by law, your mother, etc. Puts a different spin on it, for me.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 11:36 AM

Just call em forebears.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 01:26 PM

Swedish (and, I think, Norwegian) has four words for "grandparent":

Farfar = Father's father
Farmor = Father's mother
Morfar = Mother's father
Mormor = Mother's mother

Far is the informal form of fäder (father), and mor is the informal form of mödrar (mother) – like mom and dad.

So, if we adopted that system, we could call our grandparents Daddad, Dadmom, Momdad, and Mommom! And I suppose the system could be extended to great-grandparents, etc.! Hi, Momdadmom!

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 04:04 PM

Ah, genealogy... I got back 8 generations with one lot... my mother went to school with 16 other children all with the same surname, and no more distant relationship than 2nd cousins..... (small village, lots of siblings back in the 1880's...) the fun sets in when cousins marry cousins..... you end up being your own 2nd cousin!

Out-laws is such a common term. I prefer in-sins.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 04:09 PM

Yes, we use out-law as the term. And yes English doesn't distinguish between brother's wife and spouse's sister - both are sister-in-law - but the French don't distinguish between inlaws and steps on top of that, so your "belle-soeur" could be your brother's wife, your spouse's sister, or your stepsister! BUT they have a specific word for son-in-law - gendre, and for daughter-in-law, but that one I forget. Bru? Something like that.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 05:03 PM

So what's the Scandinavian equivalent of Papaw?

I don't know if any of my ancestors were musicians. Supposedly one of them was a sea captain, though, and another was a minister. I've uncovered a couple of Welshmen, and a couple of Irishmen from Ulster. Great fun.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 05:12 PM

Just call em forebears. Susan

Is that why they require a great deal of forebearance?

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Joe_F
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 07:11 PM

"Flanders. That's where my forbears came from -- three of 'em, anyway."
-- Michael Flanders

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 07:24 PM

Goldilocks and the forebears... And the fourth one got ignored by the storytellers because he didn't eat porridge and he slept on the floor in front of the fire.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: IvanB
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 07:32 PM

Just to be pedantic, the sibling of any great to the nth grandparent is your great to the (n+1) aunt or uncle. Just try it out at the lower levels: your grandparent's brother would be your great-uncle and your great-grandparent's sister would be your great-great-aunt. There's always one more great in the relationship of the sibling. So, in Kim's case, the brother of her six greats grandfather would be her 7 greats uncle.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 08:12 PM

Is there any distinction between forebears and ancestors? For example, is one posher than the other?

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: The Pooka
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 08:36 PM

Yeah & what about our Fourfathers? Now *there's* an nth degree four ya. / Then again, as a friend of mine said, it's Six o' One and Half-a-Dozen o' yuh Mother. / Fore!!

-- Waltzing with Four Bears,
----Uncle Walter

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 08:39 PM

I sort of feel ancestors are strictly the grand parents etc , direct line, but the forebears arethe whole bloody lot, nth cousins or whatever, the family. That may be wrong though. I dont know if either my ancestors or forebears had any poshness, though my maternal grandmother always claimed we were somehow related to the celebrated Percy family in Northumberland: but we could never pin her down exactly how, so I've never felt confident about popping up to the castle and asking for a cup of tea.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: The Pooka
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 08:59 PM

LTS "in-sins" hee hee hee! Excellent. / My sister-in-law (wife's brother's wife type) one time greeted me with "Hi, Outlaw!" and, like---I didn't get it. Geez.

Kim C, I dunno Scandinavian for Papaw, but some first-cousins of mine had a Mamaw. Now what was she to me? (Well what was she to THEM? I fer-git.)

But look: did anybody else have a childhood populated with parentally-so-designated "relatives", who *weren't*? Like, "Aunt Gertie" who was, in fact, the babysitter? Or the landlord, "Papa Schumann"? And so forth? Geez.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 02:36 AM

My childhood holidays were populated by a succession of 'aunts' who weren't. It's only this last 6 months (after 20 years of research) that I've discovered that they were actually my mother's 2nd cousins and 2nd cousins once removed..... the joys of living in a small village where one of your ancestors had 11 children, most of whom stayed in the village and between them produced over 25 decendants (that I know of, 17 of them in just 2 families...) between 1880 & 1910. Cousins did marry cousins, but as far as I know, there are no extra toes or third nipples.

It doesn't help when two brothers each married girls called Daisy Florence, both from the same village!

Then there were the spurious 'aunties' who looked after us whilst mother was working. I think it's just a generic female term that isn't offensive and implies some trust. They would be filling in the vacancies left by blood relatives who in days gone by, would have done the majority of childcare until they got their own children. Now we don't have large families and we tend to leave home as soon as humanly possible, there are no aunties to help out.... adopting a close friend to do the job is the best we can do.

Bratling only has one honorary aunty, that I actually call aunty (others who babysit her sometimes call themselves aunty, it's not a term I like), but she's her godmother too, so that's a bit more formal.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Hrothgar
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 09:48 AM

Didn't Einstein have an answer for this?

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Kim C
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 10:09 AM

Well, all right then. It's a possibility that my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and his longhunter brothers knew Daniel Boone. They were all Skaggs from Kentucky & Virginia. So now I wonder if I might somehow be related to Ricky Skaggs...........

I did find first cousins who married each other. Now, a lot of people think this practice was out of ignorance, but it was more so a matter of there not being anyone else to marry, especially in small towns & settlements on the frontier.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 10:34 AM

I haven't heard anyone mention "double cousins" yet. Suppose your father's brother marries your mother's sister (or your father's sister marries your mother's brother). Their children would be called "double cousins" to you because they'd be cousins on both your mother's side AND your father's side.

That happened a couple of times among my own relatives. I don't have any double cousins myself, but some of my cousins are double cousins to each other.

Subject: RE: BS: A Question of Relativity
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Apr 02 - 11:18 AM

And you can be half-identical twins, too, if the egg splits before fertilization - you may even have different fathers and be identical twins on your mother's side! Also, in my family, it's customary to use Aunt and Uncle for any relative in the parental generation, so I have people I *call* aunt or uncle who are actually my parents' cousins or even more remotely related. ALso, on my side of the family, we use the kinship terms, and people on my kids' side don't, which bothers me. I find it less comfy-cozy not to be called by kinship terms... what about y'all?