Genealogy Story – Counting the “G”s

In many of my genealogy stories, I note that someone is an nth cousin, x times removed. To those who are unfamiliar with genealogy, it looks pretty complicated. But it’s actually relatively simple. The key is simply “counting the Gs”. Let me give an example:

In my story about the early contributor of books to the Wolcott Library, I gave a couple of cases. Here is an extract of what I wrote:

“…John Alcox, and that John was my great*6 grandfather. Since he was also the great-grandfather to both William Andrus Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott…”

We need to start by finding a common ancestor between the two individuals. In this case it is John Alcox. John was my great*6 grandfather (or 6^th great-grandfather depending on how you want to record it). There are seven “G”s in that relationship, one each for the six “greats” and one in “grandfather”. Next, John is the great-grandfather to the Alcott cousins – that’s two “G”s in those relationships. So, what do we do with these “G numbers” – 7 and 2.

First, the degree of “cousin-ness” is given by the smaller of the two numbers, in this case 2 – so they are my 2^nd cousins. Secondly, the “removed” part is given by the difference between the two numbers – in this case 7 minus 2 is 5, so they are my 2^nd cousins, 5 times removed.

The other example is from that same blog where Stephen Rogers and I have a common ancestor in John Frisbie. John is Stephen’s great-great-grandfather as well as my great*8 grandfather. So the two “G numbers” are 3 and 9. Thus, Stephen is my 3^rd cousin, 6 (i.e. 9 minus 3) times removed.

This will work all the time, as long as both numbers are greater than zero. As an easy example, if you and someone else share a grandparent, then you both have a “G number” of 1 and so you are 1^st cousins (with no removed part). But what happens when one of the “G numbers” is zero. There are several cases, let’s look at them:

0-0  – the two individuals are siblings, i.e. each is a brother/sister to the other

1-0  – the second person is an aunt/uncle to the first and the first is a nephew/niece of the second

2-0  – (or any situation where the non-zero “G number” is more than 1) – the second person is a great*N aunt/uncle to the first and the first is a great*N-nephew/niece of the second. Note that the number of “great”s in the relationship is one less that the largest “G number”, 2-0 -> Great-aunt/uncle/nephew/niece, 5-0 -> great*4 aunt/uncle/nephew/niece.

The English word “cousin” is gender-neutral. We can use “sibling” as the gender-neutral equivalent of brother/sister. But aunt/uncle or nephew/niece do not have gender-neutral equivalents. Nor are these latter relationships able to be used reflexively, i.e. you are the cousin of your cousin, and the sibling of your sibling, but you are the nephew/niece of your aunt/uncle.