G4BB 63: No Grandparents For You!

No Grandparents For You!

63.1  Gosh, I hate to blow my own horn, but if I asked someone else to, that might be considered somewhat unsanitary. Point is, as I survey the various genealogical resources on the net, I have to conclude that G4BB goes some ways toward “taking it to the next level,” as they say today. For example, in the area of precision. Does it seem to you that sometimes I get too “picky”? Well, the correct relationship between 2 people is what it is…there are no almosts or maybes. Even when that relationship is complicated, like several things on one side of the family, several things on the other, these people are still related in exactly and precisely those ways.

63.2  And what I have specifically in mind is…the definition of numbered cousins…let’s do it with 1st cousins. As we have seen, “have a grandparent in common” is not sufficient, since that is true of you and your siblings. “Have a grandparent in common, but not a parent” looks like it might work, except that this is true of you and your half-1st cousins. “Have 2 grandparents in common, but not a parent” seems to nail it…trouble is, double half-1st cousins have 2 grandparents in common, yet they are not 1st cousins.

63.3  One obvious solution is to forget grandparents altogether when defining 1st cousins. 1st cousins are the children of siblings, and that is understood to mean full siblings…please do specify “full” if the context demands it. 2nd cousins are then children of 1st cousins…3rd cousins are the children of 2nd cousins…etc. This way, the definition of each successive degree of numbered cousin depends only on the definition before it…but the question of grandparents…how far back and how many…never comes up.

63.4   Now as a consequence of this definition, for example, 2nd cousins will have grandparents who are siblings…full siblings…and those sibling grandparents will share a common father and mother…these being the common great grandparents of the 2nd cousins. It all follows automatically from the simple stipulation that (X+1)th cousins are the children of Xth cousins. In effect, we are defining numbered cousins “bottom up” as opposed to “top down.” And this makes perfect sense, since “top down” can mean different alternate paths down to the cousins, and complications can arise. Start with the numbered cousins at the bottom and work your way up, and all the relationships fall neatly into place, as shown in Chart 209.

63.5  But suppose your grandparents are lovely people, and you hate to exclude them unilaterally. Instead of relating numbered cousins back to a common ancestor, you can instead go back to some degree of grandparents who were siblings…and again, we are assuming full siblings. Thus for example, in Chart 209, 2nd cousins would be defined as having grandparents who are siblings…and again, the rest of the relationships, up and down the tree, fall into line. In short, defining numbered cousins in terms of common ancestors is imprecise at best, and can lead to the wrong conclusions…I strongly recommend against it. And it’s my blog, nez pah? …even tho…to save time, sometimes I will do it myself…sue me…

63.6   Anyway, I pointed out this discrepancy…how sharing 2 grandparents doesn’t guarantee being 1st cousins…at the Genealogy.com general discussion forum, but so far have provoked no reaction…well, jeepers, it was Easter week, everybody’s busy. Now here are 4 ways you could have 2 common grandparents but not be 1st cousins…

63.7    But of course Chart 210  assumes X and Y’s parents are a pair of brothers and a pair of sisters…they could be 2 pairs of “one-of-each,” in which case there are 4 more possibilities, right? Wrong…actually there are only 3 more, since the parents being mixed pairs, and the shared grandparents also being a mixed pair, results in only 1 case, not 2.

63.8   To summarize:

case 1….X & Y share grandfather thru fathers, grandfather thru mothers
case 2….X & Y share grandfather thru fathers, grandmother thru mothers
case 3….X & Y share grandmother thru fathers, grandfather thru mothers
case 4…..X & Y share grandmother thru fathers, grandmother thru mothers
case 5….X & Y share 2 grandfathers thru their fathers/mothers
case 6….X & Y share 2 grandmothers thru their fathers/mothers
case 7….X & Y share a grandmother and a grandfather thru their fathers/mothers

As far as individuals are concerned, case 7 is different from X’s point of view than from Y’s…but genealogically, their positions are interchangeable…so its just one self same arrangement.

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Dear G4BB…Is it my imagination, or is the Media really hurting for scandals…the latest is Whitney Houston’s daughter apparently dating her “god-brother”…that sounds like a stretch, considering I’ve  never heard of such a thing…any thoughts?  …from Gomer, in Goobertown

63.9  I’m with you. In the old days, a child out of wedlock…the euphemistically cheerful “love child”…was enough to cause quite a splash…today, it’s practically routine among celebrities, not to mention everyone else. So yeah, they have to really scramble to come up with the Next Big Horrible Thing. We saw that last week with Jerry Lee Lewis and wife #7. And in the context of Forbidden Love, god-siblings haven’t existed for 500 years…but here’s the story…

63.10   The idea behind godparents…which is to say, baptismal sponsors…was originally to ensure the child would be raised in the Catholic faith, should anything happen to its natural parents. Strictly speaking, this tradition persists to the present day. By way of solemnizing the relationship, canon law originally forbid godparents and godchildren to wed…but over the centuries, this restriction spread to other members of both families. In other words, if Joe Blow was your sister’s godfather, you couldn’t marry Joe Blow’s daughter, that sort of thing. And it got to the point where this was causing a problem with people finding mates.

63.11  After all, besides the religious component, there was also an important social one…a way of linking families not otherwise related by blood or marriage, and thus strengthening community ties. But by the 16th century, these 2 aspects were operating at cross purposes…the family from which you’d want to pick a godparent was also the family you’d want as in-laws. Accordingly, at the Council of Trent, 1545-1563, these restrictions were cut back to just the parents, godparents, and godchildren. Hence your godmother’s son, your god-brother as it were, was no longer off limits.

63.12  In the Catholic Church today, there is no restriction in this regard at all. And indeed, it sometimes happens that a godparent marries a godchild, altho it’s not what you think. Say Catholic Clara is marrying non-Catholic Ned. Before the wedding, Ned converts and is baptized…his sponsor is his fiancee Clara…so technically he will be marrying his godmother, but today there’s nothing against that. Other Christian denominations have other rules and customs, and we’ll get to that in a moment…

63.13  Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown is the only child of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. Nicholas “Nick” Gordon came to live with them in Atlanta 10 years ago, when he was 12 and Bobbi Kris was 9. I can’t find the complete story, but “his parents abandoned him” or “his father went to jail and his mother couldn’t feed him,” that’s the gist of it…apparently he was originally just a friend of Bobbi Kris’. He was never formally adopted by Whitney, and his parents are still alive. The Media simply doesn’t know how to describe this relationship, so you will see “god-brother,” “foster brother,” and incorrectly “adopted brother.”

63.14  It is true that he has been quoted as saying Whitney called him her “god-son”…but for the record, they are Baptists, and the Baptist Church has no such thing as godparenting or baptismal sponsors. There is an informal infant dedication custom, which typically calls for a godparent…this could entail a ceremony, or something as simple as asking if they will be  and their accepting. Thus CeCe Winans is Bobbi Kris’ godmother, and Darlene Love was Whitney’s. The common misconception that Aretha Franklin was Whitney’s godmother was corrected by Aretha herself in an interview with Al Roker on the Today Show in February of this year. She said she was just an “honorary aunt,” and Whitney called her “Aunt Ree.”

63.15  Legally, a godparent and godchild…let alone their other family members…have no relationship at all, and thus marriage laws do not apply. Bobbi Kristina and Nick are not related by blood, and other relatives can say what they will about the “i-word”…as far as I’m concerned, that’s where the matter stands…another case of MYOB…for them and for us. Come back next week for more mailbaggage…

Wicked Ballsy

A while back, I noticed this comic strip and wondered if Alex got it right…since it’s so common these says to mistakenly call a step-relative a half-. It hinged on whether Jeff was Joanie’s natural son or step-son…turns out it’s natural…Alex’ mother and Jeff are half-siblings…so Alex is 100% correct…and as graduates of MIT, both me and her, I’d except nothing less…

But talk about You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby…when Joanie Caucus debuted in the strip on 9/10/1972, she was running away from her husband (never seen, hence no picture)…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless foster plugs…will you give them a home?…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

DFHC Easter 2012…Son of PEEPSapalooza!

Son of PEEPSapalooza!

item 1 >>>  Dear Peeps People: Last year at this time I presented a history of Peeps and their many colors…you can find it here: PEEPSapalooza.  At that time, I had hoped by this time to have more of the story…and  I do, altho we’re not all the way to PEEPStopia just yet. But to start with, here’s a review of the rainbow of Peeps hues…

item 2 >>>  Pretty in PEEPS…The Just Born Company considers their color assortment to consist of 6: blue, green, lavender ( = purple), orange, pink, and yellow. These are “regular” PEEPS…”dipped” PEEPS have a coating of milk or dark chocolate on the base, are flavored “chocolate mousse,” and are colored brown, giving you 7 total colors if you want to include them. As you can see, there are 2 PEEPS colors no longer made: red PEEPS were available only at Target stores, from 2006-2009, give or take. And as I mentioned last year, the last clipping I have advertising white PEEPS, one of the original colors dating back to the 1950s, is 2001…internet evidence suggests they were last made in 2007 or 2008…perhaps by next Easter we’ll have it pinned down!

item 3 >>>  Sorry, No Chocolates For You…I have never bought the chocolate-covered PEEPS, and wouldn’t have counted them as an official PEEPS color. Good thing too, because it turns out they really aren’t PEEPS after all! In the top row below, you see what any reasonable person would consider chocolate-covered PEEPS…but these are not made by Just Born…they are an “after-market” product from a company called Fantasy Candies. Can you buy a food product, modify it, and sell it as your own? Apparently so, cuz they’re doing it. But in the bottom row, you see that Just Born’s chocolate-covereds aren’t PEEPS at all…they are 2-dimensional if you will, they lay flat, and you can see that clearly as one is split open on the right.

item 4 >>>  What Can Brown do for PEEPS?… Now in the spectrum of PEEPS colors above, I showed what was in the stores this year for Easter. Last Christmas they had another brown dipped PEEPS variety, this time caramel flavored. Short of actually see them sitting in front of me, I wouldn’t care to guess whether they are the same shade of brown as the Easter chocolate mousse browns. The illustration on the Christmas package seems to imply they are lighter, and notice that between the Christmas and the Easter packages, the blue and yellow logos appear identically colored, so who knows?

item 5 >>>  How Red Were My PEEPS…Similarly, this past Valentines Day, strawberry creme flavored dipped PEEPS were in all the stores…whether the same color as the discontinued Target PEEPS, I cannot say.

item 6 >>> And finally…As to the “Original Marshmallow Chicks,” the Chickies made by the Tell Chocolate Corporation of Brooklyn…the kind I remember as a kid. Since last year, several websites have popped up extolling the virtues of this other brand, last made, as far as I can tell, in 2004. Most posters seem to agree that Chickies were much better, and PEEPS considered an inferior knock-off. One lady was even able to contact the family-run Tell company in 2009, and received the following reply…

At any event, here’s an article that ran in the New York Daily News, April 21, 2000…..sadly, no pictures…but squirrels?…

Wicked Ballsy

You always have options…in this case “Spring Marshmallow Birds” by a candy company called the Have It Sweet …all 6 colors plus white.

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs…going peep peep peep all the way home…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

G4BB 62: Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.

Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.

…or, The Killer Takes a Wife

62.1  Jerry Lee Lewis Marries Another Cousin!  screamed the recent headlines.  It happened on March 9, and and out trotted the predictable redneck “i-word” jokes…Meet my biological father-in-law, etc.  Except it simply isn’t true. It wasn’t true the first time, and it isn’t true this time. Let’s see what is true…

62.2  Jerry Lee Lewis was born in Ferriday, Concordia Parish, in southern Louisiana, along the border with the state of Mississippi, that border of course being the Mississippi River. His father Elmo (some census records say “Elmore”) was the 10th of 11 siblings, 7 sisters and 4 brothers. According to him, the “Lee” came from Jerry Lee’s grandfather Leroy Lewis, called “Lee” by the family…altho Jerry’s mother Mamie claimed it was in honor of her sister Stella’s husband Lee Calhoun. As you can see in Chart 207, Elmo’s sister Jane named a Henry Brown, and one of their sons was J.W., called “Jay.” As far as I can tell, this was his legal name…the initials didn’t stand for anything.

62.3  J.W. played the bass, and migrated to Memphis, where he formed a band, along with his brother Otis, a fiddler. Eventually, 1st cousin Jerry Lee Lewis joined up on piano, and soon he was fronting the band and on his way to superstardom. At age 23, Jerry Lee married J.W.’s daughter Myra Gale in December of 1957…she had turned 13 that July. It was his third marriage…um, her first. A scandal ensued, based on both age and kinship, derailing his career for a good decade.

62.4  So to address those 2 issues…you will see their relationship variously described as cousin, 1st cousin, 2nd cousin, or even, incredibly, 3rd cousin…with or without any number of removeds. As Chart 207 plainly shows, J.W.  and Jerry Lee were 1st cousins, making Myra Gale his 1st cousin once removed. Their Coefficient of Relationship is 1/16, which is to say they did not share 15/16ths of their genes. This is the same as half-1st cousins (the children of half-siblings), or halfway between 1st and 2nd cousins. It was, then as now, completely legal…roughly half the states today allow 1st cousin marriages, and even those that do not do allow anything beyond 1st cousins…with the interesting exception of North Carolina, which excludes double 1st-cousins, since genetically they are the equivalent of half-siblings.

62.5  Truth be told, bride and groom were slightly more closely related than 1C1R, owing to Leroy and Arilla Lewis…grandparents of Jerry Lee and J.W. …themselves being 1st cousins. And given the way families intertwined in that neck of the woods, other connections further back should hardly surprise you.

62.6  Now anyone doing genealogical research will find many examples of 1st cousin marriages all across North America. Today, Louisiana is not one of the states that allows it, but the history of state marriage laws is notoriously difficult to ascertain…and as I’ve said many times, writing a blog for free is different than writing a book for money. Where no laws were in place, holdovers from British Common Law prevailed, and that allowed 1st cousins to marry. And even if laws against it existed, lax enforcement depending on the locale isn’t that far-fetched. It has been reported that the marriage license asked “Relation to Bride” and Jerry put down “none,” which I take to mean, without a shred of facetiousness on my part, “not my sister or my 1st cousin.”

62.7  As to the question of the bride’s age, for most of human history, girls married and bore children soon after the onset of puberty. That is pure fact. Western Common Law allowed marriage, with the parents’ permission, of girls at age 12 and boys at age 14. Grandma Arilla was 15 when she married Grandpa Lee…Jerry Lee’s mother Mamie was 16…his sister Frankie Jean was married and widowed at 12, and sister Linda Gail first married at 14. This was commonplace where they grew up, and Jerry Lee was frankly astonished at the public’s reaction. True, it didn’t help that they lied to the press and said she was 15…it also didn’t help that Myra Gale was quoted as saying “back home a girl can marry at 10 if she can find a husband”…and it certainly didn’t help that they also lied about the date of the wedding, since his divorce from wife #2 hadn’t yet been finalized when they tied the knot…nor that they told her parents after they were married, instead of before, which would have been the strictly kosher way to go about it.

62.8  Still and all, the fact remains that there were no legal ramifications…not to Jerry Lee and Myra Gale’s union, despite the outcry…nor for that matter to any of their many relatives and neighbors in similar connubial circumstances…and the couple remained married for 13 years and had 2 children. And it’s interesting that Elvis Presley’s popularity withstood his falling in love with a 14-year-old…so perhaps it was the misinterpreted blood relation after all that was the real bone of contention.

62.9  As to Jerry Lee Lewis’ recent marriage to the ex-wife of Myra Gale’s younger brother Rusty Brown, I’d say it’s none of anybody’s business. They are not blood relatives, period. He’s 76 and she’s 62, and his caretaker, and according to the bride’s sister, they are in love and extremely happy…heck, it should happen to any of us, right? The fact that Rusty Brown and his father J.W. recently published a book of remembrances of their famous relative suggests it’s one big happy clan, and we all ought to just politely butt out.

62.10  But while we’re on the subject of in-laws, a little history is in order. It will seem strange to us that over the last millennium, codified laws have generally allowed 1st cousins to marry, but not siblings-in-law. Indeed, in England it was not until the 1st half of the 20th century that in-laws could legally wed, altho this was, as it often is, a case of the law catching up with the prevailing social practice.  (see 55.6-55.7) To understand why this is so, one must accept the fact that our ancestors’ ways were not always our ways…and understand the distinction between unilineal and bilineal systems of kinship.

62.11 In Western society today, you consider yourself part of 2 families…your father’s and your mother’s…you have 4 grandparents…and uncles, aunts, and cousins on “both sides.” This is bilineal…2 lines of descent. But this way of thinking has evolved from an older form of kinship reckoning…unilineal or 1 line of descent…where you literally belonged to your father’s family or your mother’s, but not both. It’s a simple thing to state, but as we saw in the case of Beowulf and his matrilineal kin back in G4BB 59: Dygging Ye Olde Rootes, it has some startling implications: for example, a man’s social bonds being stronger to his sister’s children than even to his own children.

62.12  And as we saw, in the days of the first Anglo-Saxons the matrilineal system was changing to a patrilineal one. Thus, when a woman married, she literally became a member of her husband’s family. This is why she took his surname, not because she was “owned” by her husband. The “wife as property” myth has relatively recently been propagated by a school of thought I will not specify here, but it begins with an “f.” In fact, across Europe, laws and customs varied greatly, and in many cases women could own property and had rights of inheritance.

62.13  The point is, “joining your husband’s family” meant something more than we might imagine today. If a man’s wife died, he could not marry her sister, simply because she was his sister too…not by blood, but by law. In fact, that’s what “sister-in-law” meant…sister by law…or sister in the eyes of the law. Obviously, things have changed considerably from olden times till now. Even so, the notion that “in-laws mean incest” has lingered…at least when it comes to “hillbilly” jokes…a sad testament to the ignorance and mean-spiritedness of some people these days.

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62.14 Next month a book by J.D. Davis will be published entitled “Unconquered – The Saga of Cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley.” Yes, the three are “cousins” in the broadest sense…no, they are not 1st cousins, each to the others…as we will sort out with Chart 208.

62.15  The key players here are Elmo Lewis and his older sisters Irene and Ada. Their offspring…Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, and Willie Leon “Son” Swaggart respectively…are indeed 1st cousins. Jimmy Swaggart is the son of Son, thus 1st cousin once removed to Jerry Lee and Mickey. It should be noted that all 3 were born within a year of each other…Jimmy March 15, 1935 and Jerry Lee Sept. 29, 1935, both in Ferriday, Louisiana…and Mickey on March 9, 1936, across the river in Natchez, Mississippi. Thus, Son Swaggart was considerably older than these 2 of his many 1st cousins, and growing up they called him “Uncle Son”…calling to mind “Uncle Junior” from the TV series The Sopranos…and the 1st episode of Danny Thomas’ Make Room For Daddy, which was titled “Uncle Daddy.”

62.16  And that’s where it might stand…as I said, the trio are “cousins” in the casual sense…as indeed, J.W. Brown and Rusty Brown are sometimes called the “cousins” of Jerry Lee, altho they are father and son.* Except for the fact that, as indicated by the red lines in Chart 208, Jerry Lee and Jimmy’s mothers are sisters…hence they are 1st cousins on the Herron side, while all three are related as either 1st cousins or 1C1R on the Lewis side. I honestly wish I had time to research this interesting family tree further…I know for a fact that a total of 4 Gilley brothers married 4 Lewis sisters, and it may have gone the other way too, sibling-wise…but that’s on the old bucket list, I’m afraid. Mailbag time next week…Happy Easter, cousin!

*That is how it’s commonly done, after all. Recall on The Andy Griffith Show, Aunt Bee calls both Andy and his son Opie her “nephews,” altho not of course to the extent that she ever introduced them as “My nephew Andy, and my other nephew Opie”…

Not Wicked Ballsy, But  Stoopid

For the life of me, I don’t understand why web-pages like the above exist. Maybe it’s the internet equivalent of people “liking to hear themselves talk”…like when a question is asked on some forum, and half a dozen helpful nudniks reply: “I have no idea.” Perhaps we should take the spirit of such as the above to be “we’re gonna get around to filling this out at some point”…or am I being overly charitable? Anyway, it gave me a chuckle, albeit a weary one.

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs…on both sides, doncha know…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

G4BB 61: Mail Delivered on Sunday…Wow!

Mail Delivered on Sunday…Wow!

61.1  Dear Friends: How did you make out with last week’s challenge? As shown below, we took the tree of the 4 half-sisters whose fathers were 2 brothers, their half-brother, and their 1st cousin..and asked how these half-sisterly relationships would be changed if Ms. C were in fact the mother of 2 of fathers instead of just one…as represented by the green line added between Ms. C and Mr. D.

61.2 Soooooo…since Ms. C isn’t related to either Anne or Beth, the change effects only Cass and Deb. They are still half-sisters (CR = 1/4) on their mothers’ side and still 2nd cousins (CR = 1/32)  on their fathers’ side, since Mr. C and Mr. D are 1st cousins. But Cass and Deb are now doubly related on their fathers’ side, since Mr. C and Mr. D are now also half-siblings, so Cass and Deb are also half-1st cousins (CR = 1/16.) Total CR = 11/32, up from 9/32.

61.3  But recall, the question as stated allowed a second interpretation…that Mr. D was 1st cousin to Messrs. A & B not their their fathers…Big Bro and Li’l Bro…but thru Mr. D’s father Li’l Bro being a sibling of Messrs. A & B’s mother Ms. AB. Again, since Ms. C is unrelated to the “AB” side of the family, this change effects only Cass and Deb. They are still half-sisters on their mothers’ side (CR  = 1/4)…but now, instead of having no relationship thru their fathers, they are half-1st cousins ( CR = 1/16) owing to their fathers being half-brothers thru Ms. C. Total CR = 5/16, up from 4/16 or 1/4.

Dear G4BB: Are all 1st cousins related to their own 1st cousins to the same degree? …from Pilar, in Paducah 

61.4  Dear Pilar: A subtle yet interesting question. The mere fact that you asked it shows you have your doubts, and rightly so. The simple answer, by definition, is yes: all 1st cousins have a Coefficient of Relationship of 1/8…on average, they share 1/8th of their genes. Thus they are a quarter as closely related as full siblings, half as close as half-siblings. But in practice, a pair of 1st cousins may be related in other ways besides 1st cousins…say 1st cousins on their fathers’ side, 2nd cousins on their mothers’ side, so their CR is higher. This is what’s called “irregular double cousins.” If they were “regular double cousins,” they’d have the same relationship on both sides of the family…in the case of 1st cousins, if their fathers are brothers and their mothers are sisters, they are “double 1st cousins,” with a CR equivalent to half-siblings…1/8 + 1/8 = 1/4.

61.2   But what I suspect is eating at you is that the basic definition of 1st cousins is a little loose…2 people who have a common grandparent but not a common parent. By the letter of this definition, “half 1st cousins” would be considered “1st cousins,” as contrasted with “full 1st cousins.” And indeed, your full 1st cousin can be thought of as your half-1st cousin on both sides… 1/16 + 1/16 = 1/8…just as a full sibling can be considered a half-sibling on both sides…1/4 + 1/4 = ½.

61.3  Remember, full 1st cousins have parents who are full siblings…half-1st cousins have parents who are half-siblings…thus, thru that common parent, half-siblings will share only 1 grandparent, not the normal 2.  It matters  because half-cousins are only half as closely related as  full cousins. The standard definition for “numbered” cousins…1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc…establishes how many generations back you need to count. But the key to full 1st cousins is their parents have the same parents…that is, the cousins have the same 2 grandparents on the side they’e related.  Contrast this with double half-1st cousins, who also share 2 grandparents (A and B), but not thru the same parents, as shown in Chart 204. Double half-1st cousins are as closely related as full 1st cousins, but thru different lines of descent, as you can see.

Dear G4BB: You have talked about 2 different kinds of kinship diagrams…what you call “family trees” with descending “branches,” what people would more or less view as traditional or standard. And what you call “parental trees” where the only connections are between parents and children…altho sometimes you mix (I’ll refrain from being trendy and using the word “hybridize”) the 2 kinds…true?   …from Scotty in Scottsboro

61.4  Dear Scotty: True. Busted. Altho you must have gathered that the overriding consideration is to make the diagrams easy to follow and understand. But you’re also right to use the word “traditional”…when a man and a woman wed, had children, and the children wed and had their own children,  the downward branching illustrated these relationships perfectly…hence even the use of the word “tree.” In such a traditional setup, single lines connecting 2 individuals indicate parent and child…double lines between 2 individuals indicate a marriage, or at least a biological union, altho in the old days that was presumed to be matrimony. Single lines connect those double lines to the offspring. Sometimes an “X” is used instead of the double lines, but the double lines come in handy if the 2 individuals are situated far apart on the diagram.

61.5  But you’re right about my mixing the 2 styles…and for an example of that, we need look no further than Chart 204 above. Look on the left side of Chart 205, the 1st cousins diagram. I have redrawn it below, sticking to the letter of the law, that is, every parent is connected to every offspring. More complicated than the original? Only slightly so…my original thought was to remove as much clutter as possible.

61.6  Similarly, on the right with double half-1st cousins, I originally connected A to his 2 sons with branching lines instead of straight ones…here it’s a matter of compactness. Otherwise, the bottom part of the diagram would have had to have been spread out so as to bring A’s position in closer. Really, it’s all a matter of style and personal preference…but again, with the goal of being as clear and concise as possible.

61.7  But what makes parental trees useful is the fact that there is only one kind of connecting line, that between parent and child. The 2 parents involved are not connected by a double line or in any other way. For example with Chart 199 from last week, how would you connect the common mother of the 4 half-sisters with the 4 fathers? It would be messy to say the least, as you can see in the lower diagram of Chart 206. The fact that Messrs. A, B, C, and D cannot be on the same horizontal line causes confusion…add to that, connecting the grandparents’ generation…Ms. AB, Big Bro, and Ms. C…to their sons would mean crossing double lines, making the whole thing a hopeless jumble…so much so that I don’t have the heart to do it…I can see it in my mind, and that’s enough…you can do it as an exercise, if you must.

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On a personal note…in terms of site views, last week marked the busiest week and the single busiest day since I started this blog in September of 2010. And March 2012 has been the busiest month ever, with 5 times as many hits as March 2011. And this despite the time constraints that have forced me to cut back to just once a week, the genealogy blog. Well, when I was unemployed (“pseudo-retired”), this WAS my job …so a heartfelt thanks to you from this thick-fingered geezer…and see you next week with more familial entanglements!

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

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Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

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G4BB 60: More Mail liaM eroM

»»»»»  More Mail liaM eroM  «««««

Dear G4BB: When you were talking about Anglo-Saxon kinship terms, you mentioned the significance of “eam,” mother’s brother, and how this word eventually came to mean all uncles. Could that be why the English word for “as an uncle” is “avuncular,” from the Latin for maternal uncle, as opposed to being from “patruus,” Latin for paternal uncle? …from Liz in Lonesometown

60.1 Dear Liz: Nice catch…while I don’t know for certain, it is suggestive, isn’t it? Something like the following might have happened: Churchmen translating Old English into Latin determined that “eam” meant “mother’s brother” and so translated that into “avunculus.” This would certainly explain why the eventual Modern English word for “uncle-ish” is derived from mother’s brother…and not from father’s brother, as you’d expect from a patrilineal system such as the Romans had. BTW, “eam” was also spelled “eme,” and according to the Oxford Dictionary, was used to archaic effect as late as the early 1800s.

Dear G4BB: I am one of 4 half-sisters…we all have the same mother, but different fathers. Two of these fathers are brothers, the others are their half-brother and their 1st cousin. Yeah…I know…don’t ask. We just call ourselves “the 4 sisters,” but we suspect we are more closely related than “normal” half-sibs…but how much and which ones? …from Anne in Elkville

60.2  Dear Anne: Your clan certainly presents an interesting situation, and an excellent chance to get in some quality practice time in diagraming and analyzing family connections. So let’s start with Chart 199. To simply our analysis, I’ve taken the liberty of giving your half-sisters and other pertinent family members appropriately mnemonic monikers. (Please don’t tell me Mom named all 4 daughters “Anne”!)

60.3  Now of course on your mothers’ side, because you have all the same mother, the 4 of you are each a half-sister to the other 3, all equal and accounted for, with a Coefficient of Relationship of 1/4.  Due to your fathers…which with “normal” half-siblings would be men who are unrelated…your relationships, taken as pairs of you, are closer, altho decreasingly so as we go. Simplest is between Anne and Beth…their fathers are full brothers, so Anne and Beth are full 1st cousins. Total CR 1/4 + 1/8 = 3/8…or halfway between 1st cousin and half-sister…so called “three quarter siblings.”  (Altho remember, that’s 3/4ths of the CR of normal full siblings…so 3/4th of 1/2 = 3/8. A CR of 3/4, or anything over 1/2, implies interbreeding, which “three quarter siblings” need not imply.)

60.4   Whatever Anne is to the other 2, Beth is the same, so we’ll continue with Anne. With fathers that are half-brothers, Anne and Cass are half-1st cousins, with a total CR of 1/4 + 1/16 = 5/16, just slightly more closely related than half-siblings (4/16 = 1/4.) Anne and Deb are 2nd cousins, since their fathers are 1st cousins. Thus they are ever so slightly more closely related than half-siblings…1/4 + 1/32 = 9/32, as compared to 8/32 = 1/4.

60.5  Likewise, Cass and Deb are also 2nd cousins, as their fathers are 1st cousins. And it is instructive to note that from Mr. D’s point of view, Messrs. A, B, and C are all his 1st cousins, regardless of whether they are full or half brothers to each other. What matters is that “Big Bro” and “Li’l Bro” are full siblings…hence their sons are all 1st cousins, regardless of which mother is whose.

60.6  But there’s an added twist, as shown in Chart 200. The way the question was stated, there is another possible arrangement…and that is that Anne and Beth’s fathers are 1st cousins with Deb’s father thru their mother Ms. AB, and not thru their father “Big Bro.” In this case, Deb’s paternal grandfather “Li’l Bro.” is a sibling of Ms. AB…and what this does is eliminate any blood relationship at all between Cass and Deb on their fathers’ side, making them half-sisters and nothing more. These results are summarized in Chart 201. So as to your answer, Anne…if the shoe fits, get another one just like it…as they say…(they who?…)

Dear G4BB: Have you seen the latest query at that loopy wiseGEEK Cousins page? If I could venture a guess, I would say the answer is 1st cousins thru mothers, 2nd cousins thru fathers. Am I close?  …from Manny in Moosylvania

60.7  Dear Manny: Bullseye! After over a year of weekly posts, some of this stuff is apparently rubbing off on some of you. As you can see in Chart 202, the questioner and their cousin are “irregular double cousins,” 1st cousins on their mothers’ side, 2nd cousins on their fathers’ side…for a CR of 5/32…or just slightly more related than single 1st cousins, which would be 4/32 or 1/8.

60.7  And on the practical side, here’s something I hadn’t really thought of until just now. When the cousins’ fathers’ family has a family reunion, they all say: “Well, their fathers are 1st cousins so they’re 2nd cousins.” To which the family historian might reply: “Sure, except that they’re also 1st cousins on their mothers’ side. I know that’s not how WE consider them, but that’s how they consider themselves…not that our family takes 2nd fiddle or anything, but it is what it is.”  

60.8  It’s almost like the cousins say to themselves: “Which family reunion is this, so what are we again?”  Which is why the generic term “cousins,” with no number, comes in real handy…and as we saw last week, generic terms can be missing from languages that have more specific kinship designations than English does, languages that might thus be erroneously considered to be “more complete.” It’s all relative, folks. Next week more questions and more answers, in approximately that order…till then, ego vobis valedicto…

Wicked Ballsy

Assignment for next week: As I was perusing Charts 199 and 200,  I noticed that unlike the other 3 fathers, Mr. D does not have a mother shown…that’s OK…for the purposes of determining the relationships between the 4 sisters, the fact that he’s a full 1st cousin to the other 3 fathers is enough. But I got to wondering, what if Ms. C was his mother? How does that change the 2 versions of the half-sisterly relationships as outlined in 199 and 200 (which I redrew  as Chart 203) and as summarized in Chart 202? Think on that and we’ll see how you did next next week…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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G4BB 59: Dygging Ye Olde Rootes

Dygging Ye Olde Rootes

59.1  Last week I left you with a conundrum. We all know what a “word” is. It is a compact way to refer to a specific thing or express a specific concept. Phrases are short groups of words, and together words and phrases can be termed “expressions”…as opposed to “descriptions,” which fully define a thing or concept. For example, the description “the thing that controls the functions of an electronic devise at a distance” is given the word remote, and we use such phrases as TV remote, cable box remote, DVD remote, universal remote,  etc. The key point here is, as we say, “why isn’t there a word for it”? As the example of “remote” demonstrates, if we need “a word for it,” one comes into being. Further distinctions can be easily assembled as phrases, and indeed if one of these comes to have predominant importance, it too may “get its own word.”

59.2  Last week I wondered why the description “father’s 1st cousin” was expressed in English as 1st cousin once removed ascending, hardly a simplification in the usual sense, as outlined above. Did the solution to this seeming contradiction occur to you? It has to do with the fact that 1st cousin once removed is not an “everyday” expression, to the extent that many speakers of English do not understand what it means. The expression father’s 1st cousin is sufficient, and indeed that person is not an important person in one’s family generally speaking…certainly not as important as those relatives that have specific words, like uncle, aunt, cousin, grandfather, etc.

59.3  In fact, 1C1R is a genealogical term, used when speaking of one’s ancestors…remember, most people are at most part of 5 living generations…you will see in the local paper a photo of a baby, its father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather. But this is unusual. Based simply on average lifespans, when the baby is an adult, he is likely to have few cousins 3 times removed who are still living…that is, his great grandfather’s cousins…and as he approaches middle age, few of his grandfather’s cousins will still be alive, his cousins twice removed…at best, a person who is 40 would have a parent who is 60 and a grandparent who is 80. Thus a cousin 6 or 7 times removed is an ancestor, and surely not a living one…and that’s ascending, since descending haven’t been born yet!

59.4  Of course, over long periods of time, chronological ages and genealogical generations can get out of sync…for example, it is said that Richard Nixon and George Bush (“43″) are 9th cousins 5 times removed, and certainly they were both alive for a large portion of their respective lives. But here is the solution to the conundrum: 9th cousin 5 times removed is certainly a simplification of great great great grandfather’s 9th cousin…imagine if it were 10 times removed, instead of 5 times. What’s more, “9th cousin” itself is a far more practical expression than someone with whom I share a great great great great great great great great grandparent, but not a great great great great great great great grandparent, wouldn’t you say?  But still, hardly something that would pop up in common conversation, unless you were comparing family trees.

59.5   Now when we compare English kinship terms with those of other languages and cultures, we might notice we lack words for certain relatives that other systems do have words for. I would recommend you read this discussion: Paucity of words for relationships. It is very illuminating, if only to show that on the internet, everybody is convinced they know what they’re talking about. But it begins with this observation:

59.6  …and ends with the interesting revelation that despite being seemingly “kinship-term poor,” English does have generic words, grandfather and uncle for instance, that Hindi does not. As Sherlock Holmes would say, these are deep waters indeed, and this leads into what I said last week I was going to do, that is, begin to examine the origin of English kinship words and expressions. Well, I’m going to take a stab at it…I can’t guarantee I’ll kill it, or even wound it to any great degree…it may just jump up and run off again.

59.7  But to begin, the origin of English kinship expressions lies in the origin of English itself, and that can be boiled down rather easily, if in a very generalized way. Linguists trace what we use today, Modern English, back thru 2 distinct periods, Middle English, then Old English, as outlined in Chart 196. 

59.8  Today, Anglo-Saxon is in common parlance synonymous with “English” or “British”…an Anglophile admires all things associated with the Brits, and in geopolitics we speak of Anglo-American relations. But “Anglo” traces back to a tribe called the Angles, who together with the Saxons, invaded the British Isles in the 5th century, after the departure of the Roman legions, in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The languages they spoke belonged to a family called Germanic or Teutonic…a group distinct from the Romance languages of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, which are all derived from Latin.

59.9  These new languages overlaid the native Celtic tongues and lingering Latin influence to form the basis of what is called Old English. Thru sheer proximity, what we would today call Scandinavian languages, including that of the Jutes from what is now Denmark, also contributed to the mix. And while it is strictly speaking called “English,” you would be unable to read it, altho you would notice many words that seemed familiar. Thus in Chart 197, you can readily recognize father, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter, niece and nephew.

59.10  The big difference you’ll notice is the 4 words used for paternal and maternal uncles and aunts, and therein lies a fascinating tale. I have also left out cousins, for the simple reason that the word, or perhaps as many as 8 different words based on familial distinctions, does not seem to exist in the root Anglo-Saxon language. Here’s a quote from an article by the late Professor of Old English Stephen Glosecki, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham:

59.11   Which is not to say of course that people didn’t have cousins…they just found no need, or so it appears, for a specific word for cousins. You must understand that for a long period of time the Anglo-Saxons were pre-literate…the earliest writing consists of runic symbols like those at the left. In the 7th century, Christian missionaries reintroduced the Latin alphabet…and much of what was written down was in what was evolving into the churchly form of Latin we have today. Thus, the number of surviving Old English documents is rather small, around 400, ranging from actual works of literature to wills and laws to mere lists of names and places. There is still much that is not understood about Old English, much that has only been guessed at or “reconstructed,” and even when specific words are known, their precise meaning is not certain. In Chart 197, for example, nefa is given as the probable equivalent of nephew. Yet it is found contemporaneously with the phrases brothor sunu and sweostor sunu, as well as the word suhterga, which contextually seems to refer to the son of one’s brother. What connotation might be intended by using one of these words or phrases and not the others is not clearly known, and, short of time travel, may never be.

59.12  But to complete our brief sketch of the overall development of Modern English, the Norman Invasion of 1066 AD brought the tremendous influence of the French Language…indeed, for centuries the British Isles could have been considered bilingual…or trilingual if one counts Latin. And it is from the French that our words uncle, aunt, and at long last cousin are derived.

59.13  I mentioned in 59.10 the use of different words for paternal and material siblings. This is done in many unrelated languages around the world and down thru history…indeed, it is what is found in Latin. And it is closely associated with a way of reckoning relatives that is simply alien to us. It is one thing to say, well, they do things differently in China, or Africa, or Polynesia, but that our own cultural as well as linguistical ancestors had another way of organizing kinship and social connections may seem a bit jarring. Nevertheless, early English kinship was in a state of flux, and was not always based on the “nuclear family” as we think of it today…indeed, the ultimate push in that direction came from the Normans, as a reflection of their feudal, rather than tribal, French society.

59.14  Simply put, the ancient Anglo-Saxons, as was typical of the Germanic tribes, appear to have been primarily matrilineal. Now this is not the same as matriarchal. Women weren’t in charge…they weren’t the movers and shakers, the decision-makers of the community. What matrilineal means is that kinship ties were organized around women…in fact, you were not technically a member of your father’s family, but only of your mother’s! This certainly seems strange to us today…our system is bilineal…for example, if your father is Arch Adams and your mother was Zoe Zollo, you consider yourself an Adams and a Zollo. In a unilineal system you would be one or the other, but not both…an Adams if it were patrilineal, a Zollo if matrilineal.

59.15  But as I said, Anglo-Saxon kinship norms were in a state of flux, a patrilineal system slowly replacing the mother-based system of their antiquity.  (And with the arrival of the French, this then began to move toward the bilineal system we have today.) This can be seen the the epic poem “Beowulf”…only one manuscript exists, written in Old English. It is believed to date from the 9th century, altho estimates range a century either way, such is the lack of precise knowledge. And it tells the story of a hero of an earlier age, and of a kinship system largely irrelevant by the time the old tale was written down…seen at best as a quaint anachronism, “old-fashioned,” in other words.

59.16  And that system was matrilineal…the focus of the clan, the tribe, the family group was a mother, and the “alpha male” if you will was her brother, usually her oldest brother. She was, as Prof. Glosecki puts it, the “figurehead,” while her brother was the “enforcer.” You were a member of her family, not your father’s family, and the adult male you had the closest ties to was your eam, or maternal uncle. Indeed, as Old English evolved into Middle English, the term for uncle, on either side of the family, became simply eam, until it was supplanted by the French oncle as uncle. And as can be seen in the story, the adult Beowulf has a close relationship with and allegiance to Hygelac, his mother’s brother. His own father is distant and in terms of familial bonds, almost equivalent to a step-father…the man married to one’s mother.

59.17   This archaic pattern, while changing into something we’d recognize as more modern, is seen in much of the existent Anglo-Saxon writing…in wills for example, sons being passed over in favor of nephews. And when you look at Chart 198, you’ll notice that the words for paternal uncle and aunt seem to group them together as “father’s relatives”…indeed “faedera” literally means “another father.” And that’s because your father was not of your clan, but of his sister’s, with closer social ties and obligations to her children than to his own. In a strange sense, he was a “biological necessity”…certainly head of his own household, but when push came to shove, of your kith but not of your kin. Like I said, it seems odd to think of it, but when you look at where we came from, their ways were not ours, pure and simple. Next week, we check the old mailbag for more goodies…see ya in 7…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

ye olde shæmælæss plœgges…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

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More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

G4BB 58: Hey LQQk…Mail!

»»»»»»  Hey LQQk…Mail!  ««««««

Dear G4BB: Can you go to school for this stuff?  …from Wendy, in Woonsocket, RI

58.1  Dear Wendy: Absolutely you can, altho your choices are few and far between. In terms of 4-year genealogy programs, Heritage Genealogy College in Salt Lake City appears to be the pick of the litter…with online classes leading to Bachelor’s and Associate’s degrees, as well as a Certificate program. Courses may also be taken a la carte, and they are especially geared toward becoming a professional genealogist.

58.2  Brigham Young University offers a major and minor in “family history studies” thru its history department, the majority of the classes on campus. They also offer an independent studies program in family history that will not result in a degree, but credits can be applied towards one.

58.3  Akamai University…an internet only college, for what it calls “mid-career” adult learners… has a 2-year Associate’s degree in genealogy. Non-degree certificates are available from Boston University, the University of Washington and the University of Toronto. Continuing education classes are offered on-line by the National Genealogical Society, probably the premiere among such enterprises.

58.4  These are just the ones I’m aware of, and I’m sure there are others…interest in such formal education is certainly on the rise.  In terms of old-fashioned brick-and-mortar evening classes, again your best bet would be to check with the history department of a school near you, or perhaps anthropology if they have it.

Dear G4BB:  I happened upon this at a website dispensing advice on writing wills, and thought of you. After all, you don’t won’t to inadvertently leave your vast fortune to the wrong relative, right?  …from Tammy in Tallahassee

58.5   Dear Tammy: Absolutely you don’t.  Say for example you intended to leave your considerable wealth to Joe Blow, your 1st cousin’s son. Writing “2nd cousin Joe Blow” could be a problem if your father’s 1st cousin has a son also named Joe Blow…he’s your real 2nd cousin, as opposed to the intended recipient, who is your 1st cousin once removed. Got any attorneys in the family?

58.6  Now in everyday conversation, it doesn’t make much sense to expend a lot of time or energy correcting someone who is confused about numbered cousins and cousins removed. If they seem receptive…fine, explore it further. But most will think you’re just wrong, and fight you on it.  If they subsequently get it into their heads to prove you’re wrong…by consulting some sort of authoritative source, be it legal, genealogical, religious, or even anthropological…they’ll discover soon enough that you were right after all. But making a mistake on a legal document can have dire consequences, obviously.

58.7  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: just about the only place you’re going to find the “wrong” information with any sort of official “cachet” is in a dictionary*…where they tend to report what’s common usage, without bothering to point out when that usage happens to be incorrect. But consider the internet: there is certainly no lack of individuals “volunteering” the information that your 1st cousin’s son is your 2nd cousin…“Hope this helps!”  Yeah, right. But I’ve yet to find a website with even the remotest whiff of authenticity that repeats that common mistake…doesn’t mean they aren’t out there…but that’s the beauty of the internet: compare and contrast and you’ll likely get an accurate consensus. BTW, I love those sites where someone asks a question, then gets to choose which answer they think is the best or “most correct”…duh!

*Altho certainly not all dictionaries are so delinquent…for example, this entry from the online Oxford Dictionary is exactly right in all particulars. Woo hoo!

58.8  The explanation you sited is correct as far as it goes. The second definition is a bit confusing…it’s just a roundabout way of saying “your parent’s 1st cousin”…which certainly would have been more helpful…and I would prefer the terms “grand uncle” and “grand aunt.” But where it does make a mistake is in the overall premise that “1st cousin once removed” constitutes 2 different relationships…the truth is, it constitutes only one relationship, that of somebody’s parent having a 1st cousin.

58.9  The trouble is that relationships that cross generations are rightfully non-reciprocal…which is to say, if I am your X, then you are not my X….if you are my father, I am not your father…the 2 “ends” of the relationship have different names, indicating which is of the older generation and which is of the younger. (Bear in mind, it’s generations, not chronological ages that counts, since for example an uncle may be younger than his nephew.) This is so commonplace we hardly think of it: father/son, uncle/nephew, grandfather/grandson.

58.10  Where our system breaks down is when referring to your father’s numbered cousins…his 1st cousin is your 1st cousin once removed, and you are his, with no indication as to which is of the older and younger generation. The best we can do is something like: you are his 1C 1R descending, and he is your 1C 1R ascending. Clumsy, but it gets the job done. Why isn’t there a better way? Well, as I outlined in G4BB #11, in Hispanic cultures there is…your father’s 1st cousin is your 2nd uncle, and you are his 2nd nephew…(see Chart 34 reprised below.) Not only are the older and younger generations indicated, but your father’s 1st cousin being your 2nd uncle parallels your father’s brother being your uncle, or in this sense your “1st” uncle. And indeed, you would likely call your father’s 1st cousin “uncle,” as much as your father’s brother….since “uncle” is approximately what he is, just one “step” beyond collaterally, or as we might say, “horizontally” on the family tree.

58.11   But as I said, the relationship of 1C 1R results from someone’s father having a first cousin…if you are the one with the father, you are of the younger generation, and 1C 1R descending to the other. If on the other hand you are the 1st cousin, you are of the older generation, and 1C 1R ascending to the other. As you can see in Chart 195, the 2 “different” relationships are in fact the same….simply defined differently depending on which “end” you’re on. Still, when you think about it, the terms “father” and “son” are defined differently too, and define 2 different “groups,” altho again it’s only one relationship…and you are a son to your father, and a father to your son, without the slightest bit of confusion.

58.12  And for the umpteenth time…if you hear of your 1C 1R…do not think of that person as your 1st cousin, because they are not…they are someone else’s 1st cousin…in this case your father’s. Or going the other way, if you are somebody’s father’s 1st cousin, then that father’s son is your 1C 1R…from his point of view, you are his father’s 1st cousin.

58.13  But the burning question is, how is it that one language or culture has a convenient word or phrase like “2nd uncle,” while another is saddled with “first cousin once removed ascending.” Further…linguistically, a specific word or phrase is intended to be a “shorthand” for a description…in this case, the description itself…”father’s 1st cousin” is shorter than the shorthand. Where did English get out of whack? I’ll make a tentative stab at answering that question next week…till then, don’t forget this is “spring ahead fall back” weekend.

This is an English translation of how the Spanish system would work in our system, as it pertains to removed cousins. The Spanish system itself has other conventions not reflected here. All the relations in the boxes are from the point of view of of the box labeled “You“…the only exceptions are the red abbreviations in the upper left corner…these indicate how that person is related to your direct ancestor in that generation…yellow for Father’s generation, pink for Grandfather’s, blue for Great Grandfather’s…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com