How many times removed cousin

And when you want to pin down your relationship exactly, the kinship chart comes into play. One final note, "times removed" refers only to cousin relationships. Your relationship to aunts and uncles is like that of grandparents: great-uncle, 2nd great-uncle, etc. Help us improve this frequently asked questions area. Please send us feedback or additional questions.

All Rights Reserved. What does 'times removed' mean in a kinship chart? Family History. Genealogy News. Records Search. Archived Materials.

Helpful Articles. Research Tips. Before I visit with distant relatives, I want to make sure I remember how exactly my distant cousins are related to me. Sometimes family relationships are complicated with all those cousins multiple times removed from you. Is there an easy way to figure it all out? What does it mean to be a third cousin twice removed?

Lafferty family reunion at The State-Record Company recreation area, How do we know if someone is our first cousin or second cousin? It depends on who the most recent ancestor is that you and your cousin share in common. So you share g randparents with your 1st cousin, g reat- g randparents with your 2nd cousin, and g reat- g reat- g randparents with your 3rd cousin.

For first cousins, you only have to go back two generations to hit your common grandparents. For second cousins, you have to go back three generations to your common great-grandparents. Since a lot of people get confused about cousin definitions, I made a little chart illustrating what a second cousin is. So notice that for you and your second cousin, A your parent is a first cousin of their parent, B you have grandparents that are siblings, and C their parents are your common great-grandparents.

For third cousins, everything just goes up a level—your parents are second cousins, your grandparents are first cousins, your great-grandparents are siblings, and you have a common pair of great-great-grandparents. A straight second, third, or fourth cousin must be on your same generation level.

The number of cousins you have grows exponentially as the degree of distance goes up. You may have a small number of first cousins, but you likely have hundreds of third cousins, thousands of fifth cousins, and over a million eighth cousins. Because I got a little obsessed with this concept while doing this post, I decided to roll up the nerd sleeves and figured out a formula for this:.

I calculated some examples below:. Most interesting to me is that these numbers go up so exponentially that taking the world average for number of children per family 2. The other way to look at this is from the top down and see how quickly the distance of relation is magnified as generations move down—while you and your sibling grew up in the same house, your kids will be cousins who might or might not be friends and your grandkids might barely know each other.

In its first couple hundred years, before expanding into the thousands, it might look something like this:. Little Telia, born right around the year , is as much a mystery to you as your ancestors from the early s up above. Wait But Why posts regularly.

If you like this, check out Meet your ancestors all of them , Your life in weeks , and What makes you you. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership.

Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz. Follow Quartz.