FRIDAY SURPRISE: Is he your 2nd cousin once removed, or 1st cousin twice removed, or...?

Friday, April 27, 2007 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant
The changing social behavior of Americans is having an interesting side effect: certain types of knowledge are becoming extinct. I'm not talking about the kind of information you'd expect to disappear: how to build a barn, how to drive a team of horses, or how to make butter. No, what I'm referring to is less obvious.

Prior to World War II - and even, in some place, for a decade or so after - people grew up in a specific area, got married, and settled in that same area to live out their lives. They might travel occasionally to see other locales, but they always returned to what they called "home" - where the rest of their family lived. Over generations, there would come to be a large number of folks in that area who were related to each other; large extended and interrelated families who knew each other well, even if they didn't always see eye-to-eye.

After the War, people started moving around the country in larger and larger numbers as the idea of going "away to college" became accepted. This lead to the practice of chasing a career across the nation, and as a result new families were being started a long way from the families which begat them. After a while, enough of these disconnected families existed that it became common for one member to not know his or her relatives in the other branch of the family, even at the first cousin level.

Without these large numbers of related people in a specific geographic area, our perceived need to know how we're related to someone else has diminished. After all, if you don't know who your cousins are, why do you need to know who the less-close members of your family are?

The upshot of this whole thing is that the common knowledge of how to place yourself (and everyone else) in the family tree is quickly fading away. Most people know how their cousins are related - but can you tell what a second cousin is? How about a third? What does "once removed" and "twice removed" mean?

Don't sweat it! Thanks the the miracle of the internet, you can find out everything you ever wanted to know about how families are structured. Check out these sites:

The Cousin Chart
Canon Law Relationship Chart
Simplified explanation of cousins
Yet another chart for determining relationships
A thorough explanation of relationships
What is a cousin? (Wikipedia)

-=[ Grant ]=-
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© 2010 Grant Cunningham Click to email me!