G4BB 89: Kitty Korner Kousins

Kitty Korner Kousins

89.1  It would seem like a no-brainer, nez pah? “Quarter cousin” is a colloquial term used in some parts of the UK, and the Oxford English Dictionary favors British over American usage, so just look it up! Trouble is, OED takes us in a whole other direction…because OED doesn’t think mathematical fractions have anything to do with it…

89.2  That bit about Shakespeare is from Merchant of Venice, 1596… “His maister and he, saving your worships reverence, are scarce catercosins.”  OED’s first recorded usage of “cater-cousin” is 1547…first for “quarter cousin” is 1656…supporting the idea that “quarter” is a corruption of “cater.” But then again…wait for it…some more recent sources have it the other way around…”quarter” came first, and eventually morphed into “cater.”

89.3  Most experts today distinguish between 2 definitions of catercousin…either a very distant blood relative…or a person who is not related but thought of as being as close as a relative or cousin. There is no agreement, as you can see from the OED citation, about what the “cater” part means. Today the idea of eating together or catering to one another…another old term is messfellow…is given less credence. The preferred derivation is from “catre,” an Old French form of “quatre” meaning the number 4. In this sense, we are talking about a square, the verb “to cater” meaning to place, cut, or move diagonally…hence cater-cornered, what you probably call catty-corner or kitty-corner.

89.4  And dear friends, if it strikes you as odd that the “experts” are uncertain as to the origin of this, as well as so many other English words and phrases, well, that’s just the etymological reality…this stuff gets lost in the swirl of billions upon billions of written, but mostly spoken, words…and nobody was really “paying attention.” Yes, many of the citations for “quarter cousin” I found are in the sense of a distant relative…too distant to bother to be precise, if they can truly be considered related at all. But many others clearly have some specific relationship in mind, and the move from “half” to “quarter” in a mathematical sense seems undeniable. And after much searching, I finally found 2 instances that spell out “quarter cousins” clearly…and it’s not what I expected.

89.5  Mind you, this doesn’t mean that all or even most of those who say “quarter cousin” mean it in this sense. But the first, thank goodness, is extremely credible…because is has to do with the ancestors of Myles Standish….yes, the Myles Standish…and a happy Thanksgiving to you too! Detailed family records were kept, both in England before the Mayflower trip…and after, delineating those oh-so-important “first families” of the New World. Even so, there was confusion interpreting the records, since so many individuals had similar names…but from what I understand, it’s all been sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction. Chart 307  concerns individuals from the Old Country, and I don’t actually know where Myles comes in, but that’s irrelevant to our purposes.

89.6  I should mention that where you see (1) and (2), these are not meant in the usual sense of Senior/Junior or I, II, III…but are instead labels given by genealogists to keep things straight. Because as you can see, both of the 4th generation Thomases married women with the same names…what’s more, when Thomas (1) and Margaret (2) died…guess what?…Thomas (2) married Margaret (1)…nice!!!

89.7  But here’s what we were looking for, gleamed from Section (6) of this detailed commentary: “Thomas (1) and Thomas (2) […] were both great-grandsons of Sir Christopher, and therefore quarter-cousins, which in the 16th century made them close kinsmen, tied together even closer by marriages into the same local gentry families.” Well, it couldn’t be any plainer than that…except at first blush this doesn’t make sense, when we redraw Chart 307 as Chart 308  to make it easier to analyze…

89.8  But if the sons of 1st cousins are quarter-cousins, what happened to the half-cousins? My first thought was something along these lines…

89.9  …that is, we’re using fractional terminology to enumerate the contemporary or same-generation cousins…what I call “numbered cousins”… straight across the family tree horizontally. But upon further reflection, my best guess is that Chart 309 shows what’s really going on…

89.10  Remember, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “half-cousins” as 2nd cousins…and goes on to say that “2nd cousins” can mean either the sons of 1st cousins, which is what we in the modern sense consider 2nd cousins…or 1st cousins once removed, that is, one individual is the son of the 1st cousin of the other. And following the logic of the fractions, the son of your half-cousin is your quarter-cousin. (BTW, this blog is composed on an Apple, using TextEdit for the text, and Paintbrush for the images. Paintbrush only allows rotation thru 90 degree intervals…”half-cousins” in Chart 309  was accomplished with Open Office’s Draw program, which allows rotations in 5 degree intervals…in this case, it’s 30 degrees.)

89.11  And I’ll say that at least one other person agrees with this. Consider this quote from a website discussing the genealogy of a Harmon family: “So your grandfather was my great uncle and you would be my quarter cousin related at six degree[s] of consanguinity.”

Looks pretty kosher to me. So for the time being, and pending further developments, we’ll say a “quarter cousin” is what in our standard system of kinship terminology is known as a “2nd cousin”…at least in the mind of one Mayflower blue-blood genealogist. But the question then becomes, how far does this fractional cousin system extend? Using the foregoing reasoning, what we’d call a “2nd cousin once removed” would presumably be an “eighth cousin,” and a “3rd cousin” would then be a “sixteenth cousin”…or should we be saying “one eighth cousin” and “one sixteenth cousin?”

89.12  Reminds me of McDonalds Third Pounder burgers…the first time I saw that, I wondered who ate the first 2 pounds! Of course, Third Pounder doesn’t mean the third of 3 pounds…it means the fraction 1/3…or one third of one pound…but that’s not what they say, is it? And then those Uncle Wiki goofballs say this sandwich consists of “a third-pound of …” Duh…English spoken here, please…

89.13  But alas, googling “one eighth cousin” returns only a couple dozen hits, all of which refer to an 8th cousin…that’s one single 8th cousin…as opposed to a whole gaggle of them…with the sole exception being a type-written transcript from an Indian Affairs hearing from the 1960s. Here the term “one-eighth cousin” is used to explain that in the Indian culture in question, no child is considered “abandoned” or without kin, even if he is only as distantly related to someone as “one-eighth cousin.” Needless to say, no indication of just what a “one-eighth cousin” actually means in this context. Perhaps they simply meant 8th cousin…altho one would think 3rd or 4th cousin would be distant enough for the point they’re making.

89.14   But if you want a weird twist…check this quote from the book The dialect of Leeds [UK] and its neighborhood  by C. Clough Robinson…

Barns are babies, and gurt-nevvy is great nephew. But what concerns us is horf-cousins, quarter-cousins, horf-quarter-cousins an’ so on. And does “an’ so on” lead to “quarter-quarter-cousins”? Trouble is, if you can have “half-quarter-cousins,” why not “half-half-cousins”?  Or maybe half-halfs are quarters? Then again, perhaps the speaker is being facetious, and just making up kinship categories to exaggerate the overflow of assembled relatives. A google search on “half quarter cousins” yielded just 3 hits…amusingly enough,  “half (quarter??) cousin” …“half (quarter!?) cousin”…and “half/quarter cousin”…which I take to mean “half or quarter.”

89.15  Other bits I found include half-half-cousin from a fan fiction story based on Gone With the Wind…half-half-quarter cousin from an on-line story about Pokemon characters, altho this might have been in jest, can’t tell…then there’s the “Urban Dictionary,” founded online in 1999, with both general and ethnic slang…they define quarter brother as your half-brother’s half-brother, which is to say, one not related to you…you and your quarter brother would share a half-brother, but on different sides of his family…same goes for sisters. But like they say…after the Devil invented wind-chimes, he moved far, far away…and so, once opened, we’ll let the topic of “quarter cousins” breathe for a while…and next week, we’ll check some mail, hokay?

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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Cletus Spackler is one-third Mary’s father…

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G4BB 88: So Who’s Your Quarter Cousin?

So Who’s Your Quarter Cousin?

88.1  I spent a lot of time this week surfing the web, looking for quarter cousins…found mentions both recent and antique…mostly from the UK or Australia…but also some from the US, which isn’t unexpected considering we share…nominally anyway…a common language. What I didn’t find was a clear-cut definition of what relationship the term is meant to refer to. And since it isn’t an “official” genealogical term, that’s not surprising either.

88.2  But let’s back up a moment, and get on firm footing with the word “half.” In English it has 2 distinct meanings…it can mean literally 50%, as in half a gallon…or approximately that much, as in half a banana. But it can also mean “partially” or “not fully”…as in I was only half-joking. This runs parallel to our use of the prefix “semi-“…a semi-circle is exactly one half of a circle…whereas if you were half-joking, it can be said you were semi-serious. Consider the difference between semi-annual and semi-automatic…or half-Italian and half-cocked.

 

88.3  And if I might digress a bit, what makes English such a rich language is the fact that while its basic roots are Germanic, it enjoys a healthy infusion of Latin, as in semi-…Greek, as in hemi-…and French, thanks to the Norman Invasion, as in demi-…each of these means “half.” You have words like hemisphere, demitasse, and of course the progressively more fleeting family of musical notes shown above. These latter concoctions arose in England during the Renaissance…American English prefers to use the mathematical fractions. And while I’m thinking of it, “half-ass” is not just a colorful way of describing someone or something that isn’t “all there”…it’s also the formal name of a large equid that was judged different enough from the common donkey to be considered not fully one…with some features that more resembled a horse, it was only “half” as ass…and that’s the Onager or Asiatic (formerly Persian) Wild Ass, Equus Hemiones.

88.4  At any rate, in modern kinship terminology, “half” means literally 50%…a half-brother shares with you 1 out of 2 parents, not the 2 out of 2 you’d share with a full brother. And while it seems strange to say your full brother is your “double half-brother”…or half-brother on your father’s side and half-brother on your mother’s side…that really is what’s going on, and this is an important concept when it extends to half-cousins, half-uncles, etc. Needless to say, the Coefficients of Relationship bear this out mathematically…½ for brother, half that or 1/4 for half-brother…1/8 for 1st cousin, half that or 1/16 for half-1st cousin, and so on. On the other hand, the older use of “half,” still prevalent in some parts of the UK, does not mean literally 50%, but rather “not fully.” After all, if “half cousin” means your 2nd cousin, that’s a CR of 1/32, which is not half of the CR with a 1st cousin, 1/8. Here, half simply means “further along the family tree collaterally.” And thus “quarter cousin” would suggest “further along still,” or 3rd cousin.

88.5   All neat and tidy, if that were the usage we find…except we don’t…for example…

88.6  Now had this helpful nudnik simply stopped after “your half-2nd cousin,” there would have been some sense to it, altho not the same sense as we were just describing. In this case, your half-cousin, or more precisely half-1st cousin, would be half-way between 1st and 2nd cousin, thus quarter cousin would be half-way between 2nd and 3rd cousin, or half-2nd cousin. Unfortunately, they then go on to give an example that completely contradicts this…instead, they think a 2nd cousin is a 1st cousin once removed, that is, the son of your first cousin…and the half- would then be an incorrect synonym for step-, in the sense of by or thru marriage. Oops and double oops…well, throw that one in the Biz Bag…

88.7   Our next example is interesting…it comes from the US…Spanish Fork is sure enough in Utah. And Girl’s Special Agent is excited that she looks like her quarter cousin. But who is GSA’s quarter cousin? She describes it as a Conan Relative, along the lines of “brother’s sister’s cousin’s sister”…

88.8   …or specifically here, “half-brother’s half-cousin.” At the top of Chart 305,  we see the typical W-shape you get with half-siblings when using a Parental Tree diagram…I have assumed that YOU and 1/2B have the same father and different mothers. Now what does it mean for your half-brother to have a half-cousin, and we’ll assume that’s a half-1st cousin? It means that 1/2B and 1/2C have parents who themselves are half-siblings…so for 1/2B, that would involve either his mother (Chart 305 bottom left)  or his father (Chart 305 bottom right.)

88.9  If it’s thru the mothers, then YOU and 1/2C are not related by blood at all…the fact that there’s a “family” resemblance, as GSA said in shape of the face and eyes, is purely coincidental. This could well be, altho I get the feeling she is saying that they are related…since 1/2C is being described as “her” quarter cousin. So it must be thru the fathers, bottom right of Chart 305. Trouble is, in this scenario, 1/2C is simply a half-cousin to YOU as well as a half-cousin to 1/2B. Looked at from 1/2C’s point of view, both YOU and 1/2B are the children of 1/2C’s mother’s half-brother, and this is true whether YOU and 1/2B have the same mothers or not.

88.10  GSA’s mistake is a common one…thinking that the link between herself and 1/2C must be different than that between her half-brother and 1/2C…since she is not a sibling, but a half-sibling to 1/2B. But the truth is, whether GSA and 1/2B were full siblings or half-siblings, their relationship would be the same to 1/2C…that is, half-cousin. In Chart 305,  whether YOU and 1/2B have the same mothers or different mothers is irrelevant to 1/2C…what is relevant is, both YOU and 1/2B have a father who is a half-sibling to 1/2C’s mother, and that makes them both 1/2C’s half-cousins.

88.11  This is the principle of interchangeability…for example, from your 2nd cousin’s point of view…you, your siblings, and your 1st cousins are all 2nd cousins to your 2nd cousin. The relationships within one branch of the family have no significance when comparing between 2 different branches…they are interchangeable. And of course it expands from there…to your 3rd cousin…you, your siblings, your 1st cousins, and your 2nd cousins…are all 3rd cousins.

88.12  Bottom line: GSA’s half-brother’s half-cousin is either no relation at all to her…or else her half-cousin as well…thinking 1/2C is “further along”…hence not a half-cousin but a quarter cousin is wrong. But the sad part for us is, we therefore don’t really know what GSA has in mind for a “quarter cousin”…the person she identified as such is in fact her half-cousin. Of course, this is assuming GSA knows what a half-cousin is in the first place…maybe she doesn’t! In which case, all we really can say is, she’s heard of “quarter cousins.”

88.13  Our third citation is of no help either…I include it only as a prime example of the way people take wild guesses when they really don’t know what they’re talking about…the technical term is “flailing about.”

88.14  What we have in Chart 306 is this: if “brother” and “wife” had a child, this child would be YOU’s 1st cousin…thru “brother.” But this child would also have 1st cousins thru its mother, “wife”…and that’s what “daughter” is…no relation at all to YOU. Why even guess “quarter cousin” in the first place? Perhaps under the mistaken impression that your blood uncle’s wife is somehow a step-relation to you, and step- is the same as half-…and “daughter” is sort of one step over from this “half,” so that makes her a “quarter.”  But I’m just guessing…it’s impossible to tell what’s in HazBazz’ mind.

88.15  So where do we stand? Well, it seems fair to say that “quarter cousin” derives linguistically from “half-cousin.” And so it would depend on what the “half-” means…and there we have 3 choices:

As we saw last week, (2) and (3) are obsolete meanings of “half-“, albeit still defined that way by the Oxford’s English Dictionary, and sure enough, that usage lingers in the UK. But to take a stab at it…

88.16   And as a matter of fact, one of my older citations…from 1888, The Kinship of men: an argument from pedigrees; or, Genealogy viewed as a science, a book written by Henry Kendall, favors choice (3)…

Notice he is calling half- and quarter-cousins what we would call cousins once, twice, etc. removed…that is, descendants of our numbered cousins. But careful! He also says such things as this:

So a quarter-brother means a quarter of a brother, in terms of degree of relationship…does that mean a  quarter cousin is a quarter of a cousin? Thats 1/8 divided by 4, or 1/32…i.e. a 2nd cousin…which, alas, isn’t one of our 3 choices…it’s getting worse, not better, isn’t it?

88.17  But hold on a minute…speaking of older sources, what’s the OED have to say about all of this quarter cousin business? Cliffhanger!  Back next week…  

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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“my brother with no arms or legs…well, actually he’s my half-brother…”

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

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

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

 

G4BB 87: “Quarter Cousins” Both Exist and Don’t Exist…Woo Hoo!

 

“Quarter Cousins” Both Exist and                                     Don’t Exist…Woo Hoo!                                              

87.1  There is an eternal struggle…in genealogy and in life generally…between Accurate and Picky. Accurate will say: “Well, actually so-and-so is thus-and-such.” Picky will respond: “Yeah, OK, technically.” And Accurate will say: “No, not technically…really.”  My take is that there is no need for this conflict…we are dealing with 2 different things…2 different ways in which kinship terms are used. Call one “Geni” for Genealogical…call the other “Pop” for Popular…or colloquial…common-place…every-day.

87.2  Geni exists so that speakers of English can communicate with one another and understand what they’re talking about. Each Geni term has a precise meaning and that’s that. What would be the point otherwise? Pop is what people say in their day-to-day-lives…talking about real families and real relationships. Pop can hue exactly to Geni…or it can diverge widely…here are 2 examples…

87.3  Quite a while ago, while researching the use of “Ascending/Descending” to distinguish the 2 “ends” of a 1st cousin once removed relationship, I came across a blogger who said that in their family, they always used the terms “Augmented” and “Diminished”…taken from types of musical chords. And over the years, the term “Diminished” had jokingly devolved into “Demented.” Now that’s one fun family, I don’t care who you are…

87.4  And just recently, I read of a person “Abe” whose father “Zeke” had 2 families…Zeke had a bunch of siblings thru his father and mother…but Zeke’s father also had a second wife, and a lot a children with her as well. Now Zeke was always very precise about this…his full siblings were his son Abe’s uncles and aunts…whereas his half-siblings were Abe’s half-uncles and half-aunts. He considered his half-relations “not my real family”…and with respect to Abe, Zeke’s point was: “They are not your real family either…which is why we call them half-‘s.” And indeed, while begrudgingly acknowledged as relatives, there was not a lot of connection between these 2 groups of Zeke’s father’s children. Abe concluded by saying that Zeke would have made a great family historian, because of his attention to these kind of details.

87.5   Well, sure…for Zeke, there was no difference between Geni and Pop usage…relationships are what they are…and he valued the closer relationships more than the more distant ones. You might not agree, were you in his situation, but that is the essence of Pop…each family, and each person within that family, is free to describe …and value…relationships as they choose.

87.6  In Chart 302 I have listed the most common “translations” between Genealogical and Popular usage. Bear in mind, these are not errors…they are simply abbreviations (as grand uncle is shortened to just uncle)…approximations (as your father’s 1st cousin being your “uncle” is similar to your father’s brother being your actual uncle, just one step “sideways” along the family tree)…or matters of curtesy or affection (as calling your wife’s  mother “Mom.”) One I’ve not included on this list is calling your 1st cousin’s son your “2nd cousin” instead of 1st cousin once removed. This is indeed an error…it is certainly not an abbreviation or a curtesy…and it fails also as an approximation since a true 2nd cousin is of your generation and a 1C1R descending is not.

87.7  Looking at Chart 303, you might say that all 3 “shapes” look about the same…all triangular, after all. But they are not, owing to the differences in generations between the 2 related individuals. This is why in Spanish, 1C1R (middle diagram) is called “2nd nephew”…and no one would claim that your nephew and your 1st cousin are “approximately the same thing”…no more than you would say that of your son and your brother…that difference in generations makes all the difference.

87.8  Now there are 2 groups of querulous people running loose. There are the snooty genealogists who think, again from The Andy Griffith Show, that Aunt Bee is nuts for calling both a father and his son her nephews. Then there are the indignant “normal folk” who think that 2nd cousin once removed ascending is a lot of fussy nonsense…cousins are cousins, that’s all, case closed. Thank goodness most people don’t fall into these 2 categories. Most people, if they had a half-brother, would probably introduce them, completely unselfconsciously, as their brother…while on the other hand, they would fascinated, as I was, to discover that their grandmother had a half-brother they knew nothing about. Not a brother, but a half-brother…because in my case, after her mother died in childbirth, her father remarried…that much I knew…but then had a son with my grandmother’s step-mother…that I didn’t know…but it’s all part of the family story, you see?

87.9  Thus we come to this cranky individual I found on the net…who wants it known that there simply is no such thing as a half-relative. And as you might expect, this erroneous conclusion is based upon a series of premises that are themselves completely wrong at every turn. The full screed is available here…as is the large number of replies he got, most con, but a few pro. And I must say it’s a wonderful thing we can all express our opinions, in public…and not be hit by a volley of stones the next time we walk out of our door, as can happen in some uncivilized parts of the world. The comments range from sublime to ridiculous…I’m not sure anyone went so far as to call this fellow a buffoon…justified as it might be…since I honestly didn’t read every one all the way thru. Perhaps you’d like to….um, buffoon him, I mean.

87.10  But let’s take him on…my standard bicolor “typewriter ribbon” format…he’s black italics, I’m red…and remember, I’m always right 😉 😉 …BTW, emphasis (in bold) is his, unless I state otherwise…

87.11  There is No Such Thing as a Half-Cousin! One of my pet peeves is a term that I see online over and over: someone claiming to be a “half first cousin” or a “half second cousin once removed” or something similar. Sorry folks, but there is no such thing as a “half first cousin.” This is a startling proclamation, when you think abut it…you might as well say there is no such thing as tomatoes, Buicks, or tranquilizers. Oh really now? Hmmmm…interesting. No Buicks, eh? Except there’s one parked just outside actually…

87.12  I know that lots of families use that term to refer to various relatives, but there simply is no such thing in the U.S. NOTE: I will describe references used in the U.S. It is possible that relations are described differently in other countries and especially in languages other than English. Am I understanding this right? There could  be half-1st cousins elsewhere, just not here? They can have them, but we can’t? You don’t mean to say “I Hate America” is behind all this? Naaah, that’s just too weird.

87.13  Many people think that a “half first cousin” is someone who shares one grandparent with you but not both of them. For instance, my great-grandfather was married twice. He had several children by his first wife. The wife then died in childbirth and great-grandfather later remarried and had more children by his second wife. Sounds familiar…I am descended from great-grandfather and his first wife. I recently met a man who is descended from great-grandfather and his second wife. Some people would think that this other man and I are half-second cousins. “Half” apparently refers to a mistaken belief that we only share half the relationship because of our different great-grandmothers. In fact, we are second cousins. Period.  Emphasis mine…so let’s take a look at this so far…

87.14  “…that we only share half the relationship…” He calls this a “mistaken belief” when it is a simple genetic fact. Same 2 great-grandparents, we share 1/32 of our genes as 2nd cousins…same great grandfather, different great grandmothers, we share 1/64 of our genes…as…well, call it what you will…but the relationship is halved. In the first case, the 2 descedants both got their genetic heritage from families A and B…in the second, one from families A and B, the other from families A and C. Not the same thing. Period and double-period.

87.15  In the United States, the standard reference for defining family relationships is Black’s Law Dictionary. It is primarily a legal reference and is used by courts, lawyers, genealogical organizations, and many others. Completely wrong…in courts of law, case law determines the outcome. In determining what terms mean in a legal sense, Black’s is a general starting point, not the deciding factor. And genealogical organizations all follow the accepted conventions, of which half-relatives is one.

87.16  Black’s Law Dictionary defines first cousins as:“The children of one’s aunt or uncle.” Note that it says “aunt OR uncle,” not both. All that is required is to share one aunt or one uncle, not both. OK, in the first place, he is misreading the use of the word “or”…that is, “aunt or uncle” here means “parent’s siblings,” which of course could be your parent’s brother or your parent’s sister. It certainly doesn’t mean you don’t have to be the child of the same uncle and aunt union to be 1st cousins…for in fact, only one of those is presumed to be your blood relative anyway. Your father’s brother could have children with many women…all the offspring are your 1st cousins, regardless of whom the mothers are, simply because that uncle is your father’s brother.

87.17  But in the second place, he is begging the question big-time. Now these days the phrase “begging the question” is commonly misused, intended to mean “raises the question” or “causes a person to ask.” What it actually means is to pre-suppose your conclusion as part of your argument. The classic case…and I mean no disrespect, but it is what it is, folks…is when some one says that everything in a religious text is true…and how do we know this? Because the text itself says so! Or when a parent says: I’m the boss in this house and everything I say goes. The child asks why…and the parent responds: Because I said so, and I’m the boss in this house! “Begging the question” is akin to “circular reasoning,” and while the examples I gave are pretty transparent, it can sometimes be very subtle and tough to tease out precisely where this mistake is occurring in a complicated argument. Which is why it’s such a crucial logical concept…and one we ought not to blur with an alternate colloquial meaning…keeping in mind what I said before, that I’m always right… 😉 😉

87.18   Here however, his begging the question is pretty obvious…he wishes to ultimately prove there is no such thing as, say, a half-uncle…therefore, in his mind, “uncle” in Black’s must mean both uncle and half-uncle, since he claims there is no distinction. But he hasn’t proven that yet! At this stage of his argument, “uncle” simply means brother of your parent, leading to a 1st cousin…half-uncles and half-1st cousins aren’t addressed. Presumably, if such things as half-‘s truly exist, your father’s half-brother’s son is going to turn out to be your half-1st cousin…but this particular definition in Black’s says nothing about that one way or another. If there were no half-uncles, he’d be on solid ground…but as I said, that is precisely what remains to be proven…he is assuming to be true what he is trying to prove…he is begging the question.

87.19  Black’s Law Dictionary defines second cousins as: “Persons who are related to each other by descending from the same great-grandfather or great-grandmother.” Note that it says “the same great-grandfather OR great-grandmother,” it does not say BOTH great-grandparents. Second cousins need to share only one great-grandparent. If they do share both great-grandparents, the relationship doesn’t change; they are still second cousins. More faulty reasoning…this time it’s apples & oranges. The difference in these 2 definitions being, one applies to direct ancestors (grandparents of whatever degree) while the other refers to collateral ancestors (father’s brother, or taking it further back, grandfather’s brother, etc.) Isn’t it obvious that between your uncle and aunt, you’re only a blood relative to one…but between your great grandfather and great grandmother, you’re related to both? Yes, Black’s is getting a little fuzzy between these 2 definitions, but then…big surprise!…that’s why it isn’t definitive, as anyone involved in jurisprudence will tell you.

87.20  And the reason Black’s is losing focus here is because of something I’ve written about many times: our laws are derived from British Common Law, which goes back far enough in time that relations were reckoned unilineally…in our case, thru the lines of the fathers only…that’s patrilineally…and further back than that in European antiquity, matrilineally. You and your brother were brothers because you shared the same father…your mothers were irrelevant…and in fact, if you shared the same mother and different fathers, you were not legally blood relatives! As our system of kinship evolved into a bilineal system, you were related, for legal purposes, to both your father’s  family and your mother’s. Thus came into being the legal concept of “half-blood”…and as several posters pointed out, laws in Western society do address this, sometimes making distinctions between full and half-blood, but more frequently declaring that there shall be no distinction between them, for the purposes of the specific law in question.

87.21  As you might expect, Black’s defines “half-blood” too, altho this fellow didn’t read that far. Not being a legal historian, I don’t know what the legal theory is behind the often found stipulation that a law be applied to full and half-blood relations equally. Is it thought of as fairness in some respect? Is it simply to avoid kinship entanglements becoming too complicated, which can easily happen? Or is it harkening back to a tradition of kinship reckoning that is no longer current? I honestly can’t say…but I can unequivocally say that Mr. Pet Peeve doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

87.22  Sadly, even some genealogy software perpetuates this myth concerning half-cousins. I have seen programs that automatically calculate family relationships and provide an answer of “half-cousins” or “half second cousins” or something similar. However, the standard references used in genealogy all disagree. No, my friend, what they all disagree with is YOU. To be blunt, such programs are wrong. What’s in your database? And that’s it? The entire argument? Pretty thin. And those responding take him apart, every which way to Sunday. As I said, most are con, a few are pro…but even then…might I quote just one of them…

87.23  Linda said…Reunion software for Mac uses the “half-cousin” designation. I’m glad you set us straight on this.  First, Linda, who are you calling “us”? Second, Linda, be careful not to be “set straight” too easily, or you’ll find yourself ping-ponging between rival “experts” until you literally don’t know which way is up. Strange that we can have half-sisters or half-brothers, but no half-cousins.  Yes, it certainly is strange, isn’t it?…chuckle, chuckle…even his “friends” make the argument against him. Thank you!  No, thank YOU, Linda…and I’d be proud to call you a half-3rd cousin twice removed-in law…

87.24  Right about now tho, perhaps you’re wondering what happened to the “quarter cousins” I promised. Well, see, there’s the trouble….they exist…and they don’t! LOL

87.25  Sorry…here’s the connection. One of the posters to the above quoted the definition of “half-cousin” from  the Oxford English Dictionary. Now bear in mind, the OED is concerned more with British English than American English…and the older the edition, the more this is true. It is an awesome work of scholarship, but must, at this time and in this place, be taken with a grain of salt. Thus is it not surprising to find “half-cousin” defined as a 2nd cousin…and also, as it says, “sometimes as a 1st cousin once removed.” And true enough, while genealogists in the UK sensibly use the standard definitions, in popular parlance “half-cousin” can still refer to your 2nd cousin, but this is not universal over there…

87.26  How far does this informal system of fractional cousins extend? Dunno…I’ve found relatively few examples of the use of quarter cousin on the internet, but they do exist…some in old books, others from contemporary bloggers talking about real relatives.  But so far, no definitive explanation has surfaced as to which relationship it’s supposed to refer to. So we’ll pick this up next week…hope to be with you then…cuz’…

Wicked Ballsy

I do miss those old bicolor typewriter ribbons…and here’s a belated shout-out to whoever it was who came up with the idea of replacing the red half with a white erasure ribbon…pure genius, sez me…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs, drawn, quartered, and not by half…

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

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

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

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/2011/02/resume.html

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

 

G4BB 86: More Stuff and Things…and Stuff…

More Stuff and Things…and Stuff…

86.1  Last week we were looking at double cousin arrangements, specifically Chart 296…a “cleaned up” version of which appears below. Now W, X, Y, and Z are all Adams 1st cousins, since their respective fathers A, B, C, and D are Adams brothers. Typically (altho not universally) 4 such cousins would have 4 unrelated mothers…their last names might be Allen, Benson, Clark, and Dodds…altho obviously different last names doesn’t ensure they aren’t related…their mothers could all be sisters…and married those 4 gentlemen. Which is a good reminder that you should be aware of all the possibilities…I always return to The Andy Griffith Show because everybody knows it. “Cousins” Gomer and Goober both have the last name Pyle (altho the first time Goober’s full name is spoken, by Andy, it’s Goober Beasley…that’s one for the Fan Logic Game.) It is thus assumed they are 1st cousins because their fathers are Pyle brothers…but it could be that their mothers are sisters, and the 2 Pyle men they married were unrelated to each other. Unusual, but not impossible.

86.2  At any rate, in Chart 296a, the mothers of the 4 cousins are not completely unrelated…W’s and X’s mothers are sisters, as are Y’s and Z’s. Thus W and W are double cousins…Adams and Baker…while Y and Z are also double cousins…Collins and Adams. And the important point here is that, to take W and Y for example, their relationship as Adams cousins is the only relationship they share. What’s going on on the “other side” of W’s family does not effect his relationship with Y and vice versa…which is to say, your cousin being a double cousin does not effect you…between 2 cousins, there will always be 3 groups of cousins…one group that they share, and 2 that they don’t….in this case W and Y share the Adams cousins, but not the Baker cousins (W only) or the Collins cousins (Y only.) Unless…

86.3  …as I said last week…there is some connection between the Baker and Collins families. So let’s check out 3 such possibilities. In Chart 298, the maternal grandmothers of W and Z are Smythe sisters…one married a Baker, one a Collins. How does this change things? And the key is this: something new is added, but nothing old is taken way…thus W, X, Y, and Z are still Adams 1st cousins…W and X are still Baker 1st cousins, hence double cousins…same with Y and Z on the Collins side.

86.4  It might be good at this point to review what “family connection” really means. It simply means there is someone who is a member of both families thru parental descent. Thus families are combined by blood…and that doesn’t happen thru marriage, but thru procreation. In Chart 298, J is both a Baker and a Smythe, but her father 3 is only a Baker and her mother 4 is only a Smythe. Another way we could have done this is to have made the mothers of 3 Baker and 7 Collins be Smythe sisters…the combinations are really unlimited.

86.5   So in Chart 298, the relationships from Chart 296a still hold…what’s been added is a relationship between W and Z. They are 2nd cousins, since their mothers J and M are 1st cousins, and their grandmothers 4 and 8 are sisters. Likewise, W and Y and 2nd cousins, as are X and Z. So all 4 are collectively 2nd cousins? NO, and that’s where it gets tricky. W and X are not 2nd cousins, nor are Y and Z.

86.6  Taking W as an example, the closest common ancestor between W and X is their maternal grandmother 4…thus W and X are 1st cousins. Yes, they are both related to their great grandmother 2, but she is not the closest common ancestor. Without “closest” in the definition, any pair of 1st cousins would also, by definition, be 2nd cousins (sharing a common great grandparent)…3rd cousins (sharing a common great great grandparent…4th cousins, etc. The whole concept of numbered cousins would lose all meaning.

86.7   But between X and Z…and X and Y as well…their closest common ancestor is a Smythe great grandparent, thus they are 2nd cousins…technically of course, 1 Smythe great grandparent would make them half-2nd cousins…both makes them full 2nd cousins. This is clearer to see in Chart 299…I have removed the connection between K and 4, because from Z’s point of view, with respect to his relationship with W, this connection is irrelevant. And that’s because tracing the connection between W and Z, you do not “go thru” K…there is no direct descent relationship between Z and K…or between W and K for that matter. To Z, K (as well as J) is a collateral relative, his 1st cousin once removed, that is, his mother M’s 1st cousin.

86.8  And since our starting point was looking for double cousin relationships, we do have new ones…W is a double cousin with Y and also with Z…likewise, X is a double cousin with Y and also with Z. But this “new” double cousin relationship is what’s called “irregular double cousins”…different on each side…in this case, 1st cousins on one side, 2nd cousins on the other side. But as we have seen, the “regular double cousin” relationship between W and X…and between Y and Z…that being 1st cousins on both sides…has not changed.

86.9  Deep waters? Yes, but that’s kinship for you…and they’re about to get a lot deeper, with Chart 300. So what have we here? W, X, Y, and Z are still Adams 1st cousins…W and X are still double 1st cousins thru the Baker side and the Adams side…Y and Z are still double 1st cousins thru the Adams side and the Collins side. Also, W and X are still 2nd cousins to Y and Z thru the Smythe family, just as they were in Chart 298. 

86.10  What has changed is that…ahem…W’s parents and X’s parents are, by pairs, 1st cousins, unless they’re siblings…which is to say, K is 1st cousin to her husband B as well as well to her sister J’s husband A….ditto the other way for J. This makes W and X double 2nd cousins as well as double 1st cousins. Can you see how? 1st cousins thru A and B (who are siblings)…1st cousins thru J and K (who are siblings)…2nd cousins thru A and K (who are 1st cousins)…and 2nd cousins thru J and B (who are 1st cousins.) And again, this added relationship doesn’t effect Y and Z, since they are related to W and X thru the Adams and Smythe families only, and those relationships have been accounted for…1st cousins thru Adams, 2nd cousins thru Smythe.

86.11  Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway…if W had a sibling S, they would also be double 2nd cousins to each other, since W’s mother is S’s father’s 1st cousin…and W’s father is S’s mother’s 1st cousin. This of course wouldn’t effect X…his relationship to S would be the same as to W…based on the principal that, for example, if 2 of your 1st cousins are siblings to each other, this has no bearing on your 1st cousin relationship to either.

86.12 And at this point, I’ll just say that Chart 301 is purely optional…extra credit if you want it, but it’s up to you… 😉 😉

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

86.13  Couple other bits…the cartoon on the left recently caught my eye…but it reminded me that there’s nothing really new under the sun. You know the red and white checkerboard logo of the Ralston Purina company? It was introduced at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, intended to make their burlap bags of feed stand out from the rest. Company founder William Danforth is said to have been inspired by the Brown family he remembered in his childhood home of Charleston, Missouri. When folks brought their produce to town on Saturdays, this clan was clad in clothing the mother made from bolts of checkerboard-patterned cloth…as cheerfully romanticized in the illustration below. Funny, I imagined everything would have been…you know, pants, hats…heck, maybe even underwear…but there you go. That’s the story from the Ralston Purina’s website, and they’re sticking to it…no harm there, sez me…as long as you take childhood memories with a grain of salt…

86.14  And we have another post on the wiseGeek “Cousins” page…again, needing not so much an analytical diagram as a dollop of Dear Flabby counsel…which I’m pleased as punch to provide. Next week…OMG!…quarter cousins???…I can’t wait…can you?

Wicked Ballsy

This is pretty cool…a while back I wondered why my charts had such funky “extra” colors splashed in…a kind reader told me why, and guess what? I now save everything as PNG’s instead of JPEG’s…problem solved. Thanx, pal…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs…on every side of every family…

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

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

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

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/2011/02/resume.html

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

G4BB 85: Accidents Will Happen…

Accidents Will Happen…

85.1  …in the best regulated families…or so the old saying goes. Last week, I went thru 54 older G4BB blogs, starting with #30…correcting typos and making other small changes. In only a few cases was anything substantial modified, and none of these concerned errors of fact. The only blog that I felt needed an update was also the one that has turned out to be the most popular, G4BB 31: Kate and Pearl…concerning the kinship between characters on The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. I have indeed begun collecting material for an update installment…most importantly, I dashed off some questions to a blogger who claims to be a humungous PJ expert…have yet to hear back, tho.

85.2  So this week, I did the same thing…to ONE blog, G4BB 29: Baque 2 Quebec. As I mentioned last time, I suspected that earlier blogs would be “messier”…both in terms of how clearly information was presented, and perhaps even in those pesky little matters of fact. Didn’t take much time to find one of those, boy…it was in the answer to a quiz I posed in #28…asking how 2 members of my own French Canadian family tree were related to each other. Here’s what was there…can you spot the mistake?

85.3  Chart 293  below gives you a closer look, removing some individuals not relevant to the question of how Clement Berube on the left and Clovis Berube on the right are related. You’ll notice that 2 groups of relatives are surrounded by yellow, on the far left and far right…this is the convention I use to indicate that one section of the tree has been repeated somewhere else in the tree, due to the logistics of trying to fit everyone together and connect those that should be connected. And it is just because of this duplication that we can see that Clement’s father Pierre Berube and Clovis’ father Charles Berube are brothers, the sons of the 2nd Louis Berube. Thus Clement and Clovis are 1st cousins on their fathers’ side. 

85.4  That much I had right. They are also 4th cousins on their mothers’ side, since Elizabeth Lizotte and Celeste Roy are 3rd cousins, both the great great granddaughters of Pierre Roy at the top. Also correct. It’s when I got to the relation between Clement and Clovis thru marriage that the boo-boo occurred.

85.5   As you can see in Chart 294, Clement Berube is also 4th cousin to Clovis’ wife Marie Roy since Clement’s mother Elizabeth Lizotte and Marie’s father Augustin Roy are 3rd cousins. Thus it is correct to say, and I did say it, that to the extent that all of Clovis’ wife’s relatives are his relatives-in-law, that includes Clement, who would then be a 4th cousin-in-law, while being a 4th cousin by blood as well. Again, no problem there…from Clement’s point of view, 2 of his 4th cousins on his mother’s side got married, that’s all.

85.6  Where I slipped up was in saying Marie Roy is 4th cousin not only to Clement (correct) but also to her husband Clovis (incorrect.) Truthfully, I got lost in the clutter of the tree, and it’s a lot plainer to see redrawn as Chart 295. I’ve generally found that duplicate portions of a tree, especially if they’re at opposite ends, can be successfully moved into the center, which is what I did with Louis Berube and his 2 sons, still colored yellow for comparison. And again, leaving out non-relevant individuals, we can see that Clovis and his wife Marie Roy are in fact 2nd cousins not 4th…his mother and her father are 1st cousins, the sons of brothers.

85.7  Yes, I was blinded by the fact that both Clovis and his wife were 4th cousins to someone else…but that doesn’t make them necessarily 4th cousins to each other. If Clement had 2 4th cousins on the same side of the family, they could be siblings, 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, or 4th cousins to each other. As you can trace in Chart 295, everyone 4 generations down from Pierre Roy’s daughter Marie-Anne Roy is a 4th cousin to everyone descended from her brother the first Augustin Roy. Between these 2 lines, all are 4th cousins…within each line, they are of course anywhere from siblings to 3rd cousins to each other. In addition, someone who is 4th cousin to Clement could also be 4th cousin to Clovis (and to his wife) if they were 4 generations removed from another sibling of Marie-Anne and Augustin Roy…a third line leading down from Pierre Roy.

85.8  So I blew it…it happens…it’s fixed. But it’s certainly a testament to my growing understanding of these issues that the mistake popped out at me as it did, and for that I’m grateful. But further along in #29, I got to discussing double cousins, and posed 2 scenarios where they may or may not exist. I left that as an “exercise,” but never addressed the answers…so I thought it would be worthwhile to do so now. There were 2 trees presented as Chart 102, in a goofy sort of “hanging tinker-toy” style…I’ve redrawn them and added names to the different groups of cousins…so let’s have a go at it.

85.9  The first thing to notice in Chart 296 is that W, X, Y, and Z are all Adams 1st cousins, since their respective fathers A, B, C, and D are Adams brothers. Then each of these 4 Adams cousins will have cousins on their mothers’ side…and we see that A and B married 2 Baker sisters…while C and D married 2 Collins sisters. Thus W and X are double cousins on the Adams and Baker sides…while Y and Z are double cousins on the Adams and Collins sides.

85.10  I hope you resisted the urge to blurt out Aha, DOUBLE DOUBLE cousins! True, in the Adams clan, there are 2 instances of double cousins…W and X are…and Y and Z are. But the important point is that the fact that W and X are also cousins on the non-Adams side…has no effect whatsoever on their relationship to Y and Z, who are in a similar situation with each other. It would have an effect if there were some kinship tie further back between the Baker and Collins families…but we are here assuming there is not. Bottom line, W is a double 1st cousin to X, as closely related as half-siblings, with a Coefficient of Relationship of 1/4…and W is a “single” 1st cousin to Y and to Z, with the normal 1st cousin CR of 1/8 to each.

85.11  But in Chart 297,  the Smith family barges in, and shoots the whole deal to hell. The 4 “cousins” seem to be connected in a “tag-team” sort of way, yet try as you might, you will not find any double cousins. Recall in Chart 296, W’s 2 sets of cousins were Adams/Baker, as was X’s. Y’s and Z’s sets were Adams/Collins. But here in Chart 297, W is Adams/Baker…X is Baker/Smith…Y is Smith/Collins…and Z is Collins/Adams. The fact that all 4 families are linked together this way is indeed unusual, but it has no kinship effect beyond the curiosity factor. Yes, amongst W, X, Y, and Z, each is 1st cousin to 2 of the others and no relation to the 3rd…but that’s as far as it goes. It sure seems like there should be some sort of “mutual” relationship between the 4, but there is not, at least not as far as their blood kinship is concerned.

85.12   Now going back one generation from the 4 cousins, it is true that the Adams brothers A and D did marry 2  unrelated women, whose respective sisters married the Smith brothers B and C. Depending on how widely you cast your in-law net, that could mean something to you…are A, B, C, and D collectively some manner of brothers-in-law? Not to me*, but it’s a free country, knock wood…

* OK, geez, you want me to spell it out, huh? A’s wife’s sister married the brother of the man who married A’s brother’s wife’s sister…bupkis in my book, but there you go…

85.13  But look here…back in 85.10 I mentioned that 2 pairs of the 4 Adams cousins being double cousin pairs had no additional effect on their kinship…unless the Baker and Collins families were somehow related. I almost added, or the Adams family was related to either or both. Exactly what kinship “bump up” would any or all of these scenarios add? That’s what we’ll look at next week, plus some other odds and ends…they’re starting to accumulate…aloha…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs, like stolen refrigerators…get ’em while they’re hot…

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

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

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

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/2011/02/resume.html

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

G4BB 84: Typos, Edits, and BSS

 

Typos, Edits, and BSS

84.1  I should explain…”BSS” stands for “Bold Soul Sister,” one of the funkiest tunes Ike and Tina Turner ever recorded…listen to it here. She starts out with her line: “Things and stuff…and stuff and things…and stuff…” which along with typos and edits, is pretty much what we have here today. Because this week, I spent my “G4BB time” reading over blogs #30-83…and correcting what needed correcting…something I’ve wanted to do for a long time…and now was the time.

84.2  And being inveterately into numbers and stats, I kept track as I went. TYPOS were anything that needed correcting…misspelling, missing word, wrong word, bad punctuation, funky spacing, etc. EDITS were anything else I wanted to change…not mistakes, but just ways I felt I could express things better. Sounds like a boring slog, but hardly…because remember, I like what I write, or I don’t write it!

84.3  Per blog, typos ranged from 0-7…edits from 0-11…both top marks of 7 and 11 were G4BB 37: Mailbag City…guess I was having a bad week. Over 54 blogs, total of 112 typos for an average of about 2…168 edits for an average of about 3. Not too bad, altho I can’t guarantee I caught everything…seems like you never can. But more importantly, I was gratified not to find any real glaring mistakes that would have needed an extensive re-write…I started with #30 because it was about a year ago, and also because I suspected that the earlier ones may need more editing…will get to them, if not next week, soon.

84.4  While not that substantial, there were 3 edits that stand out…not that you’d care that much, but it’s my blog, nez pah? And who knows, you just might be curious, if you noticed them. G4BB 36: The Cousiners began with the announcement that I now had a genealogy Q&A column appearing in a bi-weekly free newspaper that’s put out here locally. And I did…for one week…then never again, altho I’d given the guy 5 columns worth. Never bothered to find out what was going on, and the paper’s out of business now anyway, so there you go…but the announcement is now gone, obviously.

84.5   News of summer revival of the series “Dallas” on TNT prompted G4BB 52: Eek! The Ewings!  As much research as went into that, I mentioned several times that I wasn’t fully satisfied and there’d be more to come. Well, that’s been edited out because for now there won’t be…I lost interest in doing that when I lost interest in the show…around the 3rd or 4th episode. It was fine for what it was, but it seemed somehow meaner than in the old days…the “bad guys” used to be entertaining in their chicanery…now, not so much. Plus the plot moved way too fast, instant gratification or whatever…yes, the old “Dallas” was quick-paced compared to daytime soaps, but this was like turbo-steroid fast…and my interest petered out just as quickly. I hear they’ve ordered a second season…good luck and God Bless…but just not for me, sorry…

84.6  Then there’s G4BB 31: Kate ‘n’ Pearl…examining the familial connections between the characters on Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies. In terms of hits, it is far and away the most popular of my weekly genealogy blogs…and was indeed a lot a fun to research and write. It’s due for a follow-up and hopefully that’s coming in the very near future…trouble is, to do the job right, you need those damned box-sets…which unfortunately I no got…but that’s definitely on the old bucket-list. And the thing is, I did gloss over the possible connection of Granny to the mysterious Beasley clan, which is the apparent link between Kate Bradley and Pearl Bodine…we’ll see what I can dig up.

84.7  So much for the typos and edits…now for some BSS. The latest posting at the wiseGEEK Cousin page didn’t really need a chart…it was more in the nature of a Dear Flabby letter, which I was pleased to answer as best I could…

84.8  And as with so many of Dear Flabby’s real letters, there isn’t much to say except: You CAN’T change other people or how think act or think…you can only change yourself. See, Poster 71 doesn’t want to go out with her “cousin in marriage.” Or marry him either, I would guess. Well, since he isn’t that yet, she could marry him first, as I suggested. Trouble is, the gist of her letter suggests that doing so wouldn’t stop her uncle and his mother from getting hitched, in which case now she’d now be married to her “cousin in marriage.” But she can’t trim the wind, she can only trim her sail…so I suggested a way she could think about the relationship that would help her realize she isn’t related to this guy, and nothing can change that…it’s all in how she approaches it…and that she CAN change.

84.9  Next…back in G4BB 50: We Got Mail! I touched upon the subject of namesakes, specifically the Joseph P. Kennedys, and I reprise Chart 175 here. Notice there are 4…the original, the Jr., a II, and a III. I noticed recently in our local paper a sad item in the obits…the death of an infant, which is of course a terrible thing, and nothing to trivialize. But what interested me was the fact that this was “John Q. Public VI“…I’ll respect their privacy and not use real names.

84.10  There are no hard and fast rules for using such numbers…each family is free to follow its own custom or inclination. And where the broadest range of different practices occurs is in dealing with the living versus the dead. Here, I wondered if all 6 John Q. Publics were still alive…turns out they are not…only the father V, the grandfather IV, and the great grandfather III. Still, this was an interesting example of how it can be done…and is.

84.11  Finally, in last week’s examination of F.M. Lancaster’s take on 2nd cousins, we had this…he in italics, my comment in red…

I did a little web-surfing, and sure enough, 1½ cousins are few and far between…but I did find one reference, on a very long and somewhat disorganized family genealogy page…here I’ve summarized the relevant bits of information…

84.12  What we have is twin sisters marrying 1st cousins…the green circles in Chart 292 are folks of unkonwn gender. If identical twins, their offspring would be the equivalent of Enhanced Half-Siblings…if fraternal, they’re 1st cousins on the mothers’ side, 2nd cousins on the fathers’ side. In in either case, we’re taking about the relationship between ME’s parent and the 10 children of Peter and Minnie Hiebert.

84.13  Now whichever is actually the case, something is compelling ME to consider those 10 children, in relation to himself, not to his mother, his 1½ cousins…well, at the very least…“plus other ties.” Is this indeed a case of 1C1R being given that unusual fractional cousin name? Does there being twins involved have anything to do with it, to his way of thinking? Can’t be sure…further digging might help…someday…just not today. Back next week…take care…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shmaeless p;igs…or something…nuts!…

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

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

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

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/2011/02/resume.html

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

G4BB 83: Meet The Perfessor

 

Meet The Perfessor

 

83.1  My knowledge and enjoyment of kinship relationships…and the genetics behind them…got a massive kick-start when I found this website a couple of years ago…Genetic and Quantitative Aspects of Genealogy. Despite the stuffy title, it is loaded with sound information…an introductory course to this stuff. Written in 2005, and last updated in 2007, by a Brit named F.M. Lancaster…a professor of animal genetics and breeding at Harper Adams University College in Shropshire, retired since 1993. His specialty was waterfowl and poultry…ducks and chickens to us. Applying his expertise to human genealogy was inspired by his daughter, who was researching their family tree.

83.2  And based on the daughter’s genealogy site, I believe F.M. is the gentleman on the left…if it is not, I will stand corrected and….well, correct it. But it is from this source that I learned so much beyond the basics…including what I call the Parental Tree…he calls it a Path Diagram…where the only connection between individuals is parentship. This method is not useful for mapping out actual family histories, but is ideal for figuring the connections and degrees of relationship between relatives. And it’s not surprising that an expert in animal husbandry would prefer it, since let’s face it…ducks don’t have weddings.

83.3  Here are 3 typical examples from G&Q, along with my “tinker-toy” translations.

As you can see, he uses a downward arrow to connect parent and child. And you should recognize the familiar X pattern for full siblings in G&Q 2…and the W pattern for half-siblings in G&Q 1, 3. Here he is figuring the Coefficient of Relationship between the 2 individuals indicated in red. In the caption for G&Q 1, what does “non-reciprocal” mean? To be honest, I don’t really care. In this case, my normally “enquiring mind” prefers not to know why you’d label relationships that way…or symmetric/asymmetric either…after all the wrangling we went thru with the Wikipedians last week… 😉 😉 Such formal categorization is typical of academicians…”eggheads”…and fully appropriate to what they’re used to, so we’ll let it go.

83.4  What we’re looking at here are types of “Enhanced Half-Siblings.” The individuals in red share the same father…I’ve colored his circle blue in each case…but unlike typical half-siblings whose unshared parents would not be related to each other, these are. In G&Q 1, the mothers B and D are themselves mother and daughter…in G&Q 2, the mothers are aunt and niece…in G&Q 3, half-aunt and half-niece. Granted…as in G&Q 1 for example…people would tend to look askance at a man having a child with a woman, then a child with that woman’s daughter…but still, the father in all 3 cases is not related by blood to any of the women he procreates with.

83.5   And since the author comes from an animal husbandry background, the father very likely could have been! In fact, at one point F.M. gives an example of “line breeding”…a sire mated to his daughter, then granddaughter, then great granddaughter, etc. Thus he does not shy away from what G4BB gently calls “interbreeding”…it’s going to turn up in your own family tree sooner or later…the further back you go, the less likely it is that any of your “great ancestor” pairs were completely unrelated to each other…it’s simply a fact of mathematics. He will also unabashedly use the word “pedigree” as applied to humans…as should you.

83.6  At any rate, today I’d like to comment on…”annotate” if you will…a section of G&Q dealing with removed cousins, since that is a major sticking point to popular understanding of our kinship system. And I must say, after having done this with the cockamamie explanations of “cousins” at wiseGEEK and Wikipedia, it is a pleasure to be dealing with someone who knows what they’re talking about. Still, I wondered at first if he really had it right…in a roundabout fashion, he does…but I think it’s instructive to see how even an expert can wobble a bit…

83.7  His commentary is in italics…my notes are in red…and I have redrawn his Figures 1 & 2 as Charts 290 and 291.

83.8   Removed cousinships probably cause more misunderstanding than any other relationship. Although the subject is well covered in the main text, a further look would seem appropriate to identify any potentially difficult areas. How very true this is…specifically, the misunderstanding of, and hence confusion between (A) your true cousins…that is, the cousins of your generation, what are sometimes called “contemporary cousins” or what I call “numbered cousins”…1st cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, etc…and (B) your removed cousins, who aren’t your cousins at all, but are the either the numbered cousins of your direct ancestors…your father’s cousins, your grandfather’s cousins, etc…or the descendants of your numbered cousins…for example, your 1st cousin’s grandson, your 2nd cousin’s son, etc.

83.9  And notice that in the (B) category, what looks like 2 different groups of relations are simply the 2 “ends” of the same relation, no different in principal than uncle/nephew or even father/son. The awkward “removed” terminology we use makes it seem more difficult than it is. Also important to understand is that in the (B) category, these 2 groups are essentially the X’s of your Y’s…and the Y’s of your X’s…your generation is the turning point…above, it’s figured one way…below, another way. The notion that relations are reckoned differently going up or down from you is also true of uncle/nephew and father/son. This is because the 2 ends of those relationships differ in a very important way: You are related to everyone your father or your uncle is related to…but you are not related to everyone your son or your nephew is related to…that is, you aren’t related to your son’s mother (your wife) or your nephew’s mother (your sister-in-law)…nor to those mothers’ families, obviously. Going forward from you, new family lines are introduced…starting with your wife and her family. Going backward, there are no “new” family lines…they all lead to you!

83.10  By definition, all relationships are a two-way affair and removed cousins are no exception. To rationalise their relationship, one of the two cousins should be regarded as the primary focus of attention and referred to as the nominee or proband. The other cousin being considered as dependant or secondary.  But my goodness, perfessors love their jargon, God bless ’em, as here. Proband? Isn’t that a kind of men’s trousers with an elastic waist? 😉 😉 I agree that to understand the 1C1R relationship, you should focus on one individual. I would not have chosen as he has…why he chose how he did will be germane to the issue of whom you should not choose, as we shall see. I would chose the father…in Chart 290 he is H. It is because of him that there are 1C1R’s at all…one is his son, the other is his 1st cousin, the son’s 1C1R. Our clumsy “removed” terminology obscures the fact that this is exactly the way it works with uncle/nephew…a parallel which the Spanish system makes crystal clear using 2nd uncle/2nd nephew instead of 1C1R ascending/descending. There simply are no uncles or nephews if the father doesn’t have a son (the nephew) and a brother (the uncle.)

83.11  The general term “cousins once removed”, does not indicate who is the nominee, so it is not possible to determine which cousin is the senior one in terms of generations. My proposal to resolve this difficulty is to use the terms, “removed forwards” or “removed backwards” to identify the senior partner.   A little of the “ivory tower” syndrome here? This terminology has long been in place, either backwards/forwards, or what I’m more familiar with, ascending/descending…but he’s right to reiterate the necessity of it.

83.12   In the above diagram, if G is chosen as the proband; then J‘s relationship to G (i.e. looking at the relationship from G‘s point of view) is: First cousin, female, once removed (forwards). But if J is the proband, then G‘s relationship to J is: First cousin, male, once removed (backwards).

83.13  I think one of the major causes of confusion is when the “forwards and backwards” terminology is applied, quite correctly, to a single nominated individual, as opposed to using it reciprocally in a mutual relationship between the same two individuals, as shown between G and J above. Not sure what he means by this…no kinship relation can exist unless it’s between 2 people. It would be very odd to hear someone referred to as “a 2nd cousin” without it being specified to whom. 

83.14  In the second diagram (Figure 2) Where Kis the only nominated person, N‘s relationship to K is: Second cousin, male, once removed (forwards). But, I‘s relationship to K is: First cousin, female, once removed (backwards). Thus, the level of cousin relationship is different depending on whether you are looking forwards or backwards through the generations from the same person. OK, he’s starting to get off track here…his conclusions are correct, but he is close to making a very serious mistake. The cousin removed relationship between K and N derives from the existence of L…he is the 2nd cousin of K and the father of N. On the other hand, the cousin removed relation between K and I does not depend on L, but instead on H…because it is H who is the one who has a first cousin and a son. Indeed, trying to derive the relationship between K and I by going thru L leads to the common mistake that the father of your 2nd cousin is  your 2nd cousin once removed.

83.15  Furthermore, the ability to look both ways, from the same nominee, is not always possible. e.g. Returning to Figure 1; if the nominated person is G, as before, then J‘s relationship to G will remain: First cousin, female, once removed (forwards). However, when looking back to E from G, E is not G‘s removed cousin, he is his Uncle. There is no backward removed cousin relationship between E and G because D and E are full sibs, not cousins. Similarly, in Figure 2, E‘s relationship to the proband K is Great Uncle.  I don’t understand what he means by saying it might be impossible to look forward or back…you always can…which is why at G4BB I stress the importance of knowing how to determine a Cousin Line…that is, how each of the the direct ancestors of your numbered cousin is related to you…and this is all the more easy to understand since a pattern emerges based on the number of that numbered cousin. For example, going up from your 4th cousin, you have 3+1…2+2…1+3…x x x uncle…and finally x x x grandfather….those last 2 being phrases that consist of 4 words…4 being the key to the entire ancestor cousin line.  Spelled out, 3C1R…2C2R…1C3R…great great grand uncle…and great great great grandfather.

83.16  In fact, now that I think about it, he is dangerously close to making another error…that is, in thinking that “uncles” and “cousins removed” are 2 fundamentally different kinds of relationships. Sure, they sound different…an uncle is not a cousin after all. But as the Cousin Line demonstrates, none of these relatives are your cousins…they are all your collateral ancestors, and the 2 brothers…the sons of the common ancestor shared by you and your numbered cousin…get a special name…something something uncle. The only difference is in the nomenclature….but yes, it certainly adds to the confusion.

83.17  The fundamental rule for determining the level of cousin relationship when looking backwards or forwards in a “removed” situation is as follows: There are three relevant individuals in each removed relationship, two are contemporary cousins and the third, who is always positioned in a later generation, is the child, grandchild or other descendant of one of the two cousins. e.g. In Figure 2, where K is the same proband in two different relationships, when looking backwards: H and I are the two cousins (first) and K is the third member. But, when looking forwards: K and L are the two cousins (second) and N is the third member. Therefore, it is the relationship between the two contemporary cousins in each case, which determines the title, and the third person must be located at least a generation later than the two cousins. After much fumbling and bumbling, he finally states it right…all cousin removed relationships involve 2 cousins and the descendent of one of them. Wish he would have started with that at the beginning instead of probanding around like a nominee with its head cut off.

83.18  A common error is to select the third person from an earlier generation. e.g. In Figure 2, when considering the relationship between K and I, the mistake is to choose K and L as the cousins (instead of H and I) and I as the third person (instead of K), which would, incorrectly, give the relationship as: Second cousins once removed instead of the true title of: First cousins once removed.  See, just what I said…he really does get it, but he had us wondering for a while. Better to say: Just as uncle/nephew describes the relationship between a father’s son and that father’s brother, so too 1C1R is a relationship between a father’s son and that father’s 1st cousin. And not to sound like a broken record, but this so much clearer in Spanish, with 2nd uncle/2nd nephew.

83.19  The direction, forwards or backwards, simply depends on who is the proband; the relevant cousin or the third person. The relevant cousin being the one who is not the parent or grandparent of the third member. First cousins once removed are sometimes referred to as 1½ cousins and second cousins once removed as 2½ cousins. Never heard of this, and count myself fortunate. However, this terminology is not very satisfactory as it breaks down when applied to cousins two or three times removed, and should be avoided. 

83.20  Finally, the number of times removed, i.e. once, twice or three times, depends on how many generations separate the two individuals. e.g. See Figure 3 and Table 5. In Table 5, the probands are printed in red.  I have omitted the figure and the table…it simply expands what we’ve been talking about out to 3rd cousins then reviews all the cousin, uncle/aunt, and niece/nephew relationships that result. I checked them and they are correct…this final part, and indeed the entire article, may be reviewed here.

83.21  So there you have it…a bit creaky in spots perhaps, but the information is accurate enough. All I’ve tried to do is suggest a better way…hopefully a clearer and more intuitive way…to understand cousins removed. But again, nice to “banter” with someone who knows which end is up! Next week, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time…a lot of fun for me, altho probably not for you so much…plus a couple of recent odds and ends…see yez…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

mortificationless advocands…hee hee…

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

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

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

Updated Resume at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/2011/02/resume.html

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

G4BB 82: Revisiting Uncle Wiki’s Cousins

Revisiting Uncle Wiki’s Cousins

82.1  It all started when I was re-reading G4BB 65: Uncle Wiki’s Cousins. You know, I try to make these blogs interesting to people who are interested in kinship…and if I don’t enjoy reading them myself, there’s trouble. Yes, on several occasions I have junked an entire column and started over because I just didn’t like what I’d written. I think that’s the difference between, as Truman Capote called them, writing and typing. In any event, G4BB 65 was my critique of Wikipedia’s less-than-satisfactory attempt to explain what a “cousin” is, and I wondered if any changes had been made. Mind you, I did not intend to, nor did I, examine and compare the entire Wiki article, then and now, line by line…but I was gratified that the very beginning had been modified. Here’s what I had to say about what was there before…

82.2  And here’s what it looked like as of Saturday morning, August 25th, at 7:30AM…

Nice improvement…any connection between my suggestions and their re-write? It doesn’t matter…I was simply applying common sense and it appears one Wikipedian chose to do the same. I then naturally wondered if the most egregious mistake…what I volunteered to generously label a “typo”…had also been corrected…

82.3 No, it’s still there, altho…

They now have the common decency to label this goof “not standard terminology.” And trust me, for a Wikipedian, that’s saying something…it borders on being judgmental…and even tho they refuse to call a spade a spade, or an error an error, I’m sure even this gentle “not standard” qualification raised the ire of some of the cult’s True Believers.

82.4  And when you think about it, this whole “Asymmetric definitions” section is misguided. Just before this, they introduced the concept of cousins removed, and did so correctly. At this stage, it was a symmetric definition…if you are my 1C1R, I am your 1C1R…as opposed to an asymmetric definition like father/son…if you are my father, I am not your father…and if I am your son, you are not my son, get it? This section now introduces the upwards/downwards (a.k.a. ascending/descending) terminology, and yes, this converts 1C1R from a symmetric to an asymmetric kinship relation, in that it tells you which is the older generation, which is the younger…in an awkward way for sure, but as best as you can, since we lack simple terms like father/son or uncle/nephew.

82.5   So far so good…but what do they do then? They give an example of how upwards/downwards  is used, and they get it wrong! So what exactly is the “not standard terminology”?  Not upwards/downwards…that absolutely is standard terminology. When they say “some people prefer…” they must be talking about people who want to make the 1C1R relationship exact and unambiguous…by making it asymmetric rather than symmetric…they can’t possibly mean people who wish to use it the wrong way! Fine, they label their incorrect example “not standard”…but why in heaven’s name didn’t they simply use a correct example in the first place? Beats me…but then, this is typical of the fuzzy thinking that permeates Wikipedia…face it, an “encyclopedia” written by amateurs just ain’t gonna cut it, my friends.

82.6  As to this mistake itself, you’ll see it a lot…I might almost say it’s a case of over-thinking it. By that I mean, the idea of cousin removed meaning “up or down a generation” is the little bit of knowledge that’s the proverbial “dangerous thing.” It’s a case of not clearly understanding the fundamental meaning of the term cousin removed. Yes, you must keep repeating the mantra: a cousin removed is not my cousin, but somebody else’s cousin. You simply are NOT describing how this person is related to you, but how they are related to somebody else…who in turn is related to you. But who is this “somebody else”? It’s a person to whom you are either a son or a cousin…that’s because your 1C1R is someone with whom you share the the relationship that the father of one of you is the cousin of the other. And as you can see in Chart 288…in determining the relationship between X and Y…Y’s child is definitely NOT the person who is the cousin of one and the father of the other…how much plainer could it be?

82.7  But this all ties in with the fact that people who make mistakes in reckoning kinship are not using an “alternate system”…because there simply isn’t one, at least not in English. The nonjudgemental crowd can call it “another way of doing it” till they’re blue in the face, but they’re wrong. And that’s easy to demonstrate: once you try to apply the mistake to the entire length and breadth of kinship terminology…as you ought be be able to if it really were an “alternate system”… you very quickly get into contradictions and inconsistencies…but heck, that’s what making mistakes is all about! In this specific case, applying the “2nd cousin logic” to your 1st cousin ends up renaming your uncle…duh.

82.8   I might also mention in passing that the “Asymmetric definitions” section I presented above has several references cited, of which 2 are particularly relevant. [2] is a book on language, an anthology of articles, and provides a perfect example of a muddle-headed attempt to elevate a simple mistake into an alternate system…complete with tortured efforts to explain the “logic” of this supposed system…when of course there is no logic to it, as Chart 289 clearly shows. But then that’s the wacky Wiki ideal…if it’s in a book, it must be true. 

82.9  And [3] is just a web-site…possessing no more or no less intrinsic authority than G4BB. Here, the author runs thru the meanings of kinship terms, and when he gets to cousins removed, he presents the Chart 289 mistake NOT as alternate, “non-standard” usage, but simply as “the way it works.” The correct way, tellingly, is nowhere to be found. And again, this is what passes for verification, hence truth, in Wikiland.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

82.10  Well and good. Now part 2…in which I do a dangerous and probably ill-advised thing…I call the Chart 289 mistake to their attention, by posting on the “Talk” page…you’ll find the tab at the top left, to the right of the “Article” tab. I should say at the outset that I found Mr. King’s comments both civil and duly earnest…I have had run-ins with the bristly Wikipedian gatekeeper mentality in the past, let me tell you. Our conversation is reproduced below…(I am green…)

82.11  Now in my response labeled C, I began by saying I understood, but I was wrong…I most assuredly did NOT understand. I took LK at his word that this “Asymmetric definitions” section was devoted to exploring “non-standard” definitions, which is why in point (1) I wonder if all the other myriad mistakes possible…and trust me, I’ve seen the ones I cited, and more besides…were going to be included…hardly feasible, given people’s capacity for misunderstanding things. Had I bothered to re-read the section in question, I would have come to the conclusion outlined above, starting in 82.4…which is, a section that starts out introducing upwards/downwards as a method of improving cousin removed from a symmetric to an asymmetric kinship term…ends up getting the practical application of this idea W-R-O-N-G-wrong…no other way to look at it. As I said, this basic upwards/downwards terminology is, in the English language anyway, NOT non-standard! Yes, it is often ignored…it is considered, I guess, too complicated…but it IS the way we do it.

82.12  And I must call your attention to my point (3)…yes, in the uncle/nephew relationship, the nephew is called one thing and the uncle is called another…to that extent it is asymmetric. But the relationship itself is completely symmetric…both uncle and nephew share equally in the relationship of one of them being the son of the other’s brother. In other words…if from my point of view, one of us is the son of the other’s brother…then from your point of view, the same is true…one of us is the son of the other’s brother. A truly asymmetric relationship…one that would lead to inventible contradictions, as my “half-marriage” example demonstrates…would be this: If from my point of view, one of us is the nephew and one of us is the uncle, then from your point of view, one of us is the grand nephew and the other is the grand uncle.

82.13  But alas, I must now come to LK’s rejoinder labeled D. What I’m about to say will seem harsh, but I trust LK would not take it personally…he is so caught up in the Wikimentality that he can’t see the forest for the trees. Obviously, he misses the point that a section that starts out by introducing the upwards/downwards terminology…which is asymmetric in one sense, but symmetric in another…ends up applying these terms incorrectly…and no amount of “non-standard” weaseling is going to change that. BTW, is 2 + 2 = 5 these days considered “non-standard arithmetic.”

82.14  The more serious problem is his view that “there’s no point in discussing whether these alternate terms are good.” Well, sure…to the extant that anyone who makes this “alternate” error has probably already argued about it for years with more knowledgable members of his family…hopefully it was resolved short of gunplay. But the inexplicably seductive notion that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad is what makes Wikipedia ultimately such a huge waste of time. With no right or wrong, human knowledge itself is impossible. The trouble is this: If there is no right or wrong, then it is neither right nor wrong to say there is no right or wrong! Thus, it is wrong that there is no right or wrong…altho it’s also right…end result: intellectual chaos.

82.15  And if I might try to “explic” the inexplicable, could it be that it makes one conclude “Therefore I cannot be wrong”? Perhaps it’s similar to how calling them “issues” makes one think one has no “problems.” I can’t honestly say. I do recall the goofy admonition: Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. In any event, is it any wonder that I chose to stop my wikiversation and just let it go? Well, there, not here, obviously. Still, this confusion between 2nd cousins and 1C1R reminds me of something written on-line by a very knowledgable individual…in contrast to the ineffectual ramblings from Wikipedia and wiseGEEK that I’ve critiqued here in the past. It’s a website and an author that’s been a great help to me, and I’d like to pass it along to you…which happens next week, same time, same blog…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs…right, wrong, wright, rong…ding, dong…

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

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

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

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

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

G4BB 81: She’s NOT Your What Again?

She’s NOT Your What Again?

Dear G4BB: I found your explanation of why Andy Taylor is Aunt Bee’s 1st cousin once removed…Andy’s father is Bee’s 1st cousin, not brother…very interesting. But aren’t you assuming that when Andy calls Bee’s niece Martha his “2nd cousin,” he is using that term correctly? After all, in common parlance, lots of people don’t.  …from Hershey, out on the Highway…

81.1  Dear Hersh: Yes, I am absolutely assuming that…and that’s how the Fan Logic Game is played. You can assume anything you want, so long as it jibes with the facts gleaned from the show…then you can argue with those who assume differently. That’s pretty much the whole point of the game…arguing. 😉 😉 Excuse me if I choose to think that the simplest and best interpretation of the facts is to assume that everyone means exactly what they say…that they are using kinship terms correctly.

81.2  The article you’re referring to is here: G4BB 41: She Ain’t Your Aunt. What I call the “smoking gun” episode is “A Baby in the House,” the 25th show of the 6th season, originally aired on March 7, 1966. Bee, Andy, and Helen are chatting when Bee gets a phone call. It’s her “niece” Martha calling from Jacksonville…BTW, there is a Jacksonville in North Carolina…in other episodes, the cities of Cleveland and Nashville are mentioned, and they too exist in NC…no doubt the writers meant the “bigger” cities, but who knows? Anyhow, Martha is traveling with her husband Darryl up to Jersey City for her sister Grace’s wedding, and she wonders if Bee could baby-sit her infant daughter Evie Joy. Also BTW, we see both Darryl and Martha…she is portrayed by an actress named Candace Howard…but no relation as far as I can tell to Ron and his acting family.

81.3  The point is, when Bee says it’s her niece Martha on the phone, Andy says to Helen “My second cousin.” And this establishes Bee as Andy’s father’s 1st cousin, not sister as most assume. After all, if Bee were Andy’s father’s sister, and Andy were literally her nephew, then her niece would be his 1st cousin…and Helen would certainly know that, understanding how aunts, nephews, and nieces work. It is quite telling then that Andy says what he says…altho again playing the Fan Logic Game, could you argue that he merely meant to emphasis that it’s a relative on his side of the family? Nope, because since Bee is unmarried, she has no other side…i.e. Martha can’t be her husband’s niece. Would she call her sister’s husband’s niece her niece? Seems unlikely.

81.4  You could even go so far as to suggest that Andy misspoke when he said “2nd cousin,” and he really mean “1st cousin”…but then who misspoke? The character Andy Taylor or the actor Andy Griffith? Pretty far-fetched if you ask me. Assuming they mean just what they say is more near-fetched, but I suppose that’s just me…

81.5  But let’s examine your idea. If Andy is making the typical “2nd cousin mistake,” then he and Martha would actually be 1st cousins once removed…that is, one is the 1st cousin of the other’s parent. They will say “My father’s 1st cousin is my 2nd cousin”…or else “My 1st cousin’s son is my 2nd cousin.” Chart 280a assumes the correct meaning of “2nd cousin.” In Chart 280b, Andy turns out to be Bee’s 1st cousin! He calls her “aunt” presumably because of the difference in ages…completely plausible. Then in Chart 280c, Andy is Bee’s grand nephew…she  abbreviates that to “nephew” and that’s also common usage.  After all, she calls father and son…Andy and Opie…both her “nephews.”

81.6  But continuing along those lines, what if Bee doesn’t literally mean Martha is her “niece”…that is, her sibling’s daughter. Maybe Martha is Bee’s 1st cousin’s daughter…they are 1st cousins once removed, or in the Spanish system, Martha is Bee’s 2nd niece. Or Martha could be Bee’s grand niece, again abbreviated to simply “niece.”  Charts 281 and 282 examine these possibilities, coupled with whatever the heck Andy might mean by “2nd cousin.”

81.7   The reason Martha is colored pink in all of these diagrams is that she is the “linchpin”…the formula goes: If Martha is X to Andy…and Martha is Y to Bee…what is Andy to Bee? I have summarized all the possibilities below in Chart 283…with “meaning literally what they say” highlighted, Chart 280a. It might be a worthwhile exercise for you to check my conclusions…you’ll notice that for Chart 281a, there are 2 possible relations for Andy…there may be others that I missed. And in fact, there is one other, which is why “1st cousin” for Andy for Chart 281b is marked with an asterisk*…in this case, the given relationships would still be consistent if Andy were Bee’s brother!  So help me, I couldn’t bring myself to include this possibility on the corresponding chart…can you blame me? But talk about skeletons in the Taylor family closet…

81.8  But it is interesting to see that in 2 cases…Charts 281a and 282b…Andy would indeed be Bee’s nephew, as everyone supposes. Still, in the first case, that’s only if Bee is not being literal in what she says about Martha, and in the 2nd case, only if neither she nor Andy is being literal. That’s your call of course…believe what you like…and long live the Fan Logic Game!

Dear G4BB: At the beginning the 2012 “rebooted” Three Stooges movie, a duffle-bag is thrown from a speeding car, landing on the steps of an orphanage. Up pop 3 toddlers who are baby versions of the knuckleheads, implying that the trio are brothers. Were they in real life? … from Cartesia, in New Nyuck-Nyuck 

81.9  Dear Cartesia: Maybe the Farrelly Brothers who made the movie had brothers on the brain…but here’s the scoop: 6 actors were Stooges down thru the years, and while 3 of them were brothers in real life, those 3 were never in the group all at the same time…it was 2 brothers and 1 others [sic]…that being Louis Feinberg, known professionally as Larry Fine. Shemp, Moe, and Curly were indeed brothers, the 3 youngest in a family of 5 boys…their parents were immigrants from Latvia. As an aside, you’ll sometimes see it said they were from Russia, but that’s “Soviet Union thinking,” because along with Estonia and Lithuania, the annexation of the 3 Baltic states was never recognized by the US…all thru the Cold War, each had an accredited representative in Washington D.C., albeit in exile.

81.10  At any rate, I read several places that little was known about the 2 older brothers, least of all their names…well, somebody wasn’t remembering that we now have online access to all the census data! Sure enough, I found the family right where it should have been, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn…that unusual spelling of “Isidore” persisted thru 2 censuses, so presumably it wasn’t just the census-taker’s error. In Chart 284 above, I’ve included the name “Jerry” because before he became an official Stooge in 1932, Curly appeared in several movies as Jerry Howard.  Altho now that I think about it, in Soup to Nuts Moe was billed as Harry Howard. This was one of several film they made with Ted Healy…they were considered his films at the time…today they’re marketed as just more 3 Stooges movies.

81.11  Chart 285 shows the evolution of the trio, starting as sidekicks of vaudeville performer Ted Healy, then on their own. Interesting to note that the lineup us Baby Boomers are most familiar with…at least what I thought of as the 3 Stooges…Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe…lasted almost as long as the “classic” Larry, Moe, and Curly…seeing old shorts, it was like “Hey, there’s a different bald guy!”

81.12  And yes, we ought to mention the mysterious “7th Stooge.” He was comedic actor Emil Sitka, and he appeared in various roles in 3 Stooges shorts and movies starting in 1946. When Larry suffered a stroke in 1971, plans were to have Emil take over as “Harry”…but nothing came of it, short of the publicity photo you see here, with him on the right. And not for nothing, but did you know that in real life, Jerry “Curly” Howard was a redhead? And while I’m thinking of it, it was sometimes spelled “Curley”…and he was considered the most popular…lobby posters would often read “Curly, Larry, Moe”…hence Larry’s nickname “the Middle Stooge.”

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

81.13  Here’s a new query from that wiseGEEK Cousins site…my answer went more or less like this: Call this cousin “Zelda.” For Zelda to be your 2nd cousin, you and she must be of the same generation. Are you? Your grandmother and her brother (your grand uncle) are of the same generation. Zelda is 1 generation down from them, but you are 2 generations down from them…so you and Zelda are not 2nd cousins. Zelda belongs your parent’s generation…she is your parent’s 1st cousin, because THEIR parents are siblings.

 Since Zelda is your parent’s 1st cousin, you and Zelda are 1st cousins once removed. If Zelda has children, those children would be your 2nd cousins, because you and they would be of the same generation…their parent (Zelda) and your parent being 1st cousins. It’s easier to see if you try drawing it out on paper!

81.14  The interesting thing here is how more and more it seems, families are confronting the traditional way they always reckoned kin…with the correct way. Some balk at admitting they’ve been wrong their whole lives, but they should think on this: whether you admit it or not, you’re still wrong…so you might as well. But next came this:

81.15  OK, so somebody else is picking up the ball…that’s fine by me, as long as they get it right, which in this case they have. The fact that the answer here is so basic just goes to show the degree to which people on the one hand don’t know…but on the other hand, want to know…which is a good thing, certainly. That’s why G4BB exists after all…and in keeping with our policy that every question gets a chart, check out Chart 287 to the right…I just happen to have all these silver discs lying around…chow 4 now…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs…every one a bird in this world…

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

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

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

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

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

G4BB 80: …deep in the Mail Silo…

…deep in the Mail Silo…

Dear G4BB:  I was googling “grand cousins” when I came across this on the Yahoo! Answers  site…LOL! … from Ginger in Bakersfield

80.1  No kidding. Hilarious. See, when you don’t know something, you can flail about, pretending you do, like a twit. And flail this poor soul does, first suggesting something that doesn’t exist in English…then wondering whether “step-” can extend beyond the relatives of a parent’s new spouse to one’s own blood relatives.

80.2  Or you can ask and find out…only don’t try asking Yahoo! Answers. For the life of me, I can’t understand how they can set up a system where a question is asked…then the asker, who by definition doesn’t know the answer…gets to choose which of the answers that are posted is the best…or presumably “right”!  It’s nuts, and there’s no better example of the dumbed-down, numbed-down state of the public’s intellectual mentality than this useless, narcissistic website.

80.3  Here, the “best answer” is of course dead wrong…altho well on its way towards describing that bizarre Even/Odd system of reckoning collaterals…see G4BB 75: Odds and Evens.  6 other answers came in, 5 of them correct…that is, 2nd cousins as shown in Chart 278…and one other that is sooooo wrong, it may give you a chuckle…it did me.

80.4  The eternal difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits…there are a 100 wrong answers and only one right one. Honestly, it had never occurred to me that someone could think “2nd cousin” means the same thing as “cousin twice removed.”  It’s so kooky, you might almost think someone’s deliberating spreading disinformation…but to what end? Who would benefit? Well, somebody with a website like G4BB I suppose…but gosh, remember what I said about genius, stupidity, and limits… 😉 😉  That obligatory “Hope this helps” is what makes me suspicious…it’s just a tad too ironic, nez pah? But as they say, the wise man learns from the mistakes of others, the fool not even from his own.

Dear G4BB:  I noticed you answered another question at that wiseGeek cousin site…just wondering, do they ever thank you?  from Nathan in Hotdogburg

80.5  Well, the latest poster 62 did thank someone in advance…so I guess that would be me. Ideally, some of these guys will put 2 and 2 together…google “stolf” and “genealogy”…and find their way here for the real deal. But otherwise…no, it’s a thankless job. Still, it’s a hobby, so what can you do? This latest one isn’t a mere question of clarifying correct usage…this person seriously doesn’t want to “marry their family” as they put it.  They’ve been spooked by years of pseudo-scientific propaganda about the dangers of interbreeding.  Closer than 1st cousins is not good…but 1st cousins and beyond adds negligible genetic risk…look it up if you don’t believe me. So here’s more or less how I answered it…

80.6  Let’s call the son of your aunt and your boyfriend’s cousin “Zack.” As you correctly surmise, Zack is your 1st cousin…and also the son of your BF’s 1st cousin, making him your BF’s 1st cousin once removed. You are a blood relative to Zack only on his mother’s side, thru your aunt. Your BF is a blood relative of Zack only thru Zack’s father, your BF’s cousin. Unless and until we hear otherwise, we’ll assume that these 2 sides of Zack’s family are not related by blood to each other…which means you are NOT a blood relative of your BF.

80.7   State laws don’t prohibit the marriage of non-blood relatives, with the occasional exception of adopted relatives, which doesn’t apply here. It then boils down to precisely what YOU consider “family.” If anyone from family A marries anyone from family B, does that make A and B one big unified family? That’s your call…but since you and your BF are not blood relatives, the law is on your side at least.

Dear G4BB:  It’s interesting that the “Doonesbury” comic strip was correct in calling Jeff the “half-uncle” of Alex, since Alex’ mother J.J. and Jeff are half-siblings thru Joanie Caucus. But at their recent wedding, I didn’t get the reference to Black Sabbath on the far right. Any idea?  from  Alice in Cooperville

80.8  Every idea…and it has to do with family trees or lack thereof. One of the running story lines is the fact that Alex’ new husband Leo “Toggle” DeLuca doesn’t know who his father is. His mother was a rock and roll groupie back in the day, and her best guess has always been it was someone from Mötley Crüe.

But in advance of the wedding, she tried to nail it down, struck out, and reluctantly went on to Black Sab. Hence, Toggle’s putative pop may or may not have shown up, get it? And who better to recognize him than Zeke…a.k.a. Uncle Stupidhead… J.J.’s scuzzy boyfriend, neither of whom were invited to the wedding, but who crashed it anyway as bartenders.

Dear G4BB: Have you ever heard of “bonus families”? As in bonus mom, bonus son, bonus siblings, etc. Is it the new terminology for “steps”?  from Barbie in Midgefield

80.9  It’s a term made up by a pop psychologist named Jann Blackstone-Ford…and with a moniker like that, would you be surprised to learn that she likes to coin a phrase? Ex-Etiquette, counterpartners, the tried and true co-parenting, and of course a whole stable of bonusrelatives.

80.10  Let’s back up a bit…a copyright assures you the legal ownership of works you create…books, articles, music, movies, whatever. A trademark is a word, phrase, or symbol that uniquely identifies your product or service. Bonus Families® is the name of an organization…non-profit no less…dedicated to promoting kinder, gentler step-families. It’s also, by extension, a website. Ex-Etiquette® is the name of a newspaper column she writes about how to deal with people you don’t like, but once did, and now still have to for the sake of the kids…roughly. These are trademarks of an organization, a website, and a newspaper column. The contents of the site and column are copyrighted…all this is as it should be since it’s all her intellectual property.

80.11  On the other hand, the word bonusfamily…her spelling, alloneword…is meant to signify an idea, and ideas as such are neither copyrightable nor trademarkable. She expressed this idea in a recent column….

80.12  Yes, I make up terms all the time for things I’m not aware are called anything else, like Parent Tree, cousin line, numbered cousins, etc. Anyone can use these terms…they are simply shorthand for ideas, and nobody can own an idea. Could you write a book about bonusfamilies? Could you use that word in the title? I’m not sure…I do know that you can’t trademark words for kinship relationships, again since they’re ideas. But if you get the feeling I think this whole bonusbusiness is a bit silly, well, you’re right. There’s nothing wrong with calling step-families “steps”…in fact, another phalanx of self-help gurus has come up with the neologism “step-wives.” If you need a more modern term, surely “blended families” is familiar to most people.

80.13  To me, the interesting twist is that this whole enterprise was jointly founded by Jann Blackstone-Ford and another lady named Sharyl Jupe. They are intermeshed-for-life via their current/former husbands or something. Until early this year, the Ex-Etiquette column was written by both of them…now it’s under  just JBF’s by-line…altho both host the website…was there a bonusdivorce after the holidays?

80.14  OK, it isn’t that interesting a twist, but at least one of them is gainfully employed putting this stuff out, and something she says could inadvertently be helpful, since so few people these days can figure things out for themselves…so in this economy, more power to her, and God bless. But then whatever happened to metrosexuals, bromance, and here’s an oldie but goodie, herstory. C U in VII…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

bonusless plugs…

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

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

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

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

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