Re: Kinship terminology

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> Seems to depend on culture.  I still don't have the English 2nd and 3rd
> cousin things worked out, though I do have 2nd cousins.
It's actually not that complicated, if you have a diagram to illustrate:

A simplified family tree

A---B   (Parents)
  |
-----
|   |
C   D   (Siblings)
|   |
E   F   (1st cousin)
|   |
G   H   (2nd cousin)
|   |
I   J   (3rd cousin)
|   |
K   L   (4th cousin)

And so on, in essence, the number of generations back to the common
ancestor minus 1, so 1st cousins share grandparents, two generations
back, 2nd cousins share great-grandparents, 3 generations back, and so
on.

Now, for the "once removed" and so on it's a little more complicated,
but not by much.  The weird thing (IMO) is that it's symmetrical in that
both sides of the relationship use the same term, as if "Uncle" and
"Nephew" were the same word.  E and H are "1st cousin once removed",
that is, they both call each other that.  E and J are "1st cousin twice
removed".  The "removed" part indicates how many generations apart they
are.  One way to look at it is, "1st cousin twice removed" is either
"1st cousin's grandchild" or "grandparent's first cousin".  In my mind,
there should be different words, like something like "third cousin twice
added" to describe E's relationship to J.  Oh, well, Watakassí will
probably do something like that.  :-)

Actually, given the longer lifespan of the Natives, I suspect they'd
have more use for words for more generations than we do.  That is, for
further than two generations up or down the immediate line of descent
you just keep adding "great" - "parent", "grandparent", "great
grandparent", "great great grandparent", etc.  It probably wouldn't be
uncommon to have a 3- or 4-greats grandmother alive.  Hmmm .... and a
lot simpler, since they're only unilinear, no need to worry about
paternal/maternal, etc.

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