How to work out family relationships

How to work out family relationships

In the latest guest blog from Family Tree magazine, we take a look at how to calculate who’s when when exploring your ancestry.

As it’s Valentine’s Day, we thought now would be a great time to focus on relationships; or more specifically, relationships between different members of our family tree. Although most of us are confident in working out the cousins, aunts, great-grandparents, etc, terms such as ‘second cousin once removed’ or ‘natural child’ can prove more of a challenge.

Cousin relationships

We’ll begin with cousins, who are of course, the children of an individual’s uncle or aunt. The words ‘first’, ‘second’ or ‘third’ and so on, simply describe the number of generations between the people concerned and their common ancestor.
So – first cousins share the same grandparents; second cousins have great-grandparents in common and third cousins share the same great-great-grandparents.
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The words ‘once removed’ when describing family members means that the first, second, etc cousins are in a different generation to each other. So, for example, a second cousin once-removed is the child or parent of a second cousin.

Base and natural child

During your family tree research, you will probably come across one or more terms used to describe an illegitimate child. Such terms can include

• Base born
• Natural
• Bastard

Each of the above can mean a child born out of wedlock, ie an illegitimate child. Although such terms can vary from document to document, as a rule of thumb, a ‘base’ child is usually the child of a single mother, whereas ‘bastard’ generally means the child of an unmarried but established couple’ and ‘natural child’ refers to a blood child rather than one who is adopted, or a step-child.

Relationships at a glance

• Second cousins: share the same great-grandparents
• Third cousins: Share the same great-great-grandparents
• Second cousin twice removed: second cousins with a two-generation difference

Family Tree magazine’s easy to use relationship calculator

For a quick and easy way to discover who’s who on your family tree, check out Family Tree’s handy relationship calculator.

(Image copyright Tuck DB Postcards)