What is a second cousin?

The image is from the genic Images.

You are not alone if you can't keep your second cousins and first cousins straight. There is a way to figure out the relationships between relations.

Family reunions are often filled with people who are confused about what makes them. The harder it is to decipher, the more steps there are.

What is a family member?

It is helpful to begin with the basics in order to understand an extended family tree. According to the journal, the term "ancestor" refers to people who share a direct line. Ancestors don't include the siblings of people like your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents. The siblings of a parent don't count as ancestors if they are uncles and aunts.

Other than aunts and uncles, any other blood relative that isn't an Ancestor is a cousin. The term "cousin" can be used to refer to a first cousin. This is the child of a family member.
What is a second cousin?

First cousins share a grandparent, second cousins share a great-grandparent, third cousins share a great-great-grandparent, and so on. The number of generations between two cousins' parents and their common ancestors is known as the degree of cousinhood.
Click on the arrows to see where a second cousin is on the family tree.

When does a cousin get removed?

According to ancestry.com, the term "removed" refers to the number of generations separated from the cousins. The child is the parent of your first cousin. The child is the parent of your second cousin. Your first cousin is the grandchild of your first cousin.

Family distant relatives.

Barack Obama and Dick Cheney are distantly related. The image is from the genic Images.

It doesn't take a long time for your family tree to be unwieldy. In 2007, it was revealed that Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are cousins. Lynn Cheney was researching her husband's genealogy for a memoir when she discovered this.
Parallel and cross are parallel.

If these distinctions aren't confusing enough, first cousins can be further separated into parallel and cross cousins. According to the journal American Anthropologist, the children of same-sex siblings are called parallel cousins. Cross cousins are the offspring of opposite sex siblings, such as your mother's brother's children or your father's sister's children.

The two relatives at the family reunion are second cousins once removed, and they are A's mother's aunt and B's father's grandmother.

There are additional resources.

The evolution of families and marriages can be found in this book. Would you like to explore your own family tree? You can trace your ancestry on websites.

There is a bibliography.

"What is ancestry?" The article is titled "plosgenetics" and can be found in the journal.

There are structures of parallel-Cousin marriage. The American Anthropologist was published in 1986.