In case you were also wondering what a "fourth cousin" was, someone who shares a pair of great-great-great grandparents[0]. Wikipedia has a great set of diagrams[1] in case you're also confused about first, second, or third cousins. I figure through induction you can presume any nth and nth removed from that page (I foolishly thought 3rd was where people arbitrarily stopped keeping count....)
Generally the "1st/2nd" bit denotes how many generations up you have to go to find a common ancestor, and "removed" is how many generations removed the other person is from that generation.
You are, to your your first cousin's child, who is your first cousin once-removed, a second cousin once-removed.
Actually the term "second cousin" does not have a concrete meaning. It can mean a true second cousin, or it can also mean a generation removed from a first cousin. The "once removed" terminology was introduced to compensate for this ambiguity.
Ah, I read "sons of first cousins" as "two people who are first cousins to each other each have a son". "A son of a first cousin" would be much less ambiguous. In fact, even knowing what you meant, I have a hard time reading the meaning you intended to convey.
Another clearer way to phrase it would be "sons of my first cousin are not my second cousins".
That makes a lot of sense! The distinction between sibling and nth cousin is basically arbitrary. (Although obviously there is logic in making the distinction as well as in omitting it.)
brother b1 and sister s1 from family 1, with parents g1
brother b2 and sister s2 from family 2, with parents g2
s1 has child x with b2 - x has grandparents g1, g2
s2 has child y with b1 - y has grandparents g1, g2
x and y are cousins, and also share the same 2 pairs of grandparents :-)
Those are "double first cousins". I even have some triple cousins in my tree, where three siblings from one family married three siblings from another family.
Agreed: in the case of siblings you share all ancestors; with cousins only some. In that way the distinction makes sense. The other way to look at it though is that with siblings your common ancestor is one generation up. With first cousins, it's two. With second, it's three. So it's the same thing, just a matter of degree.
Worse even, the "once removed" notation has no notion of direction, so it's inherently ambiguous. I'm also pretty sure that less half of the people I hear using it know what it means (or tries to mean).
This got me confused. You actually mean people who confuse "second niece" (i.e. your cousin's son) with "second cousin". Is that usage common in english? The daughters of cousins are second cousins,no?
You are hitting the borders where logic and common usage meet.
I am actually surprised that descriptive grammar holds up so well to logic. (There's no a priori reason why descriptive grammar, that describes common usage of language, actually is as mostly compressible to simple rules as it is.)
Design of language is a constant trade-off, between ease of remembering, compression (ie giving shorter ways to express more common concepts), fault-tolerance, desire of the speaker to look clever, fashion, ...
And all of us work on the evolution of language every day.
That depends on which direction the cousin is removed. If a generation above your father, it is your first cousin twice removed. If a generation below, it is your second cousin.
You are a (1,0)-child to your father (who is a (0,1)-parent to you). Your father is either (2,3)-cousin or (3,2)-cousin to the other person. It is ambiguous from the terminology. So you are either (3,3)-cousin or (4,2)-cousin to them. That is second cousin for the former and first cousin twice removed for the latter.
I think, if your father's cousin-once-removed is a generation below him, then he/she is your first-cousin. While a generate above you father would signal first-cousin-twice-removed...
Where our family is from the priests wouldn't allow marriage between 6th cousins. My grandfather was 6th cousins three times removed from my grandmother. (so she was 9 generations away from common ancestors with him) They had to get written permission from the bishop to get married.
The Church worked very deliberately over centuries to reduce the influence of families / clans, in some places more successfully than others. It all revolves around inheritance rights and accumulated power. (Also in some cases the Church could collect money by charging for exemptions.)
The beauty of selective enforcement. Dig deep enough into your ecclesiastical data-monopoly and you can veto just about any marriage at will. It never was the same again once laymen started to read and write.
Yes, it was the Franciscans who were a huge influence and kept record of these things.
Most people would remember relations as far as great-grandparents and relations to families/family friends that they knew. Literacy was pretty high in the region early on as well, but people continued to rely on the church for recordkeeping.
Through induction, you can also say that your sibling is your nilth (0th) cousin, and your identical twin is your negative-first cousin. That makes aunt or uncle a nilth cousin once removed, and a great aunt or great uncle a nilth cousin twice removed. Your parents are negative-first cousins once removed.
If this sounds ridiculous, that's because it is, as a natural consequence of the ridiculous nomenclature.
It would be far less confusing to just insert an unordered pair of numbers for both individuals' genetic distance from their common ancestor. So instead of a first cousin once removed, you would have a (2,3)-cousin. Identical twins would be (0,0), parents would be (0,1), ordinary siblings (1,1), aunts and uncles (1,2), and so on. A fourth cousin would be (5,5).
But that doesn't account for half-siblings, so it would be inadequate for some family relationships.
I used to really struggle with those types of diagrams. Like, they make sense on their own, but it's hard to reason about the patterns with them; the relationships (heh) between each diagram aren't clear.
I much prefer the square/diamond type diagram that's further down in the article. It seems like black magic at first, but if you stop and think about it for a bit, once you understand it, is crystal clear.
I guess it's about short-term or long-term ease of understanding.
Let's calculate. I have a pair parents, 2 pairs grandparents, 4 pairs of great grandparents, 8 pairs great-great grandparents, and 16 pairs great-great-great grandparents.
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[0] https://www.reference.com/family/fourth-cousin-7b40e096c6d65...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin#First_cousins