in case he grows up and gets rich, i need to know that I can get some kind of family money from him

April 19, 2007 1:44 PM

Familytreefilter: Okay, so my mother's brother's wife's sister's daughter had a child. What is his relation to me? What's his mother's relation to me?

I've always called the mother of the child my second cousin, but when I think about it, I'm not sure if that's right. And I have no idea what the little guy is to me.

This is twisting my brain, so I need the hive mind's help

posted by carpyful to human relations (26 comments total)

You and that child share no ancestors, and your aunt's sister isn't married to anyone with whom you share ancestors. As far as I can tell, you have no relation.
posted by chimaera at 1:48 PM on April 19, 2007

As far as I can tell, neither the baby nor his mother have any relation to you. His mother is your uncle's niece by marriage, and the baby is your uncle's great-nephew. Since the baby's great-aunt is only your aunt by marriage, you have no familial relationship to her relatives.
posted by cerebus19 at 1:49 PM on April 19, 2007

Try wikipedia
on this.
posted by The Giant Squid at 1:49 PM on April 19, 2007

The Wikipedia list of cousins relies on how far back you share ancestors, so I don't believe that will be helpful when it appears that there is no shared ancestor here.
posted by chimaera at 1:51 PM on April 19, 2007

Your mother's brother is your uncle. Your mother's brother's wife is your aunt. Your mother's brother's wife's sister is not a relative, nor are any of her children.
posted by mikeh at 1:53 PM on April 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Your mother's brother is your uncle because you share an ancestor.

His wife is your aunt because she's married to your uncle.

Her sister and you share no ancestors, nor is she married to anyone with whom you share ancestors, as far as we know, just like chimaera said, so in English there is no term for your relationship.

Jews might call the child part of your mishpachah though.
posted by grouse at 1:56 PM on April 19, 2007

mikeh is correct.

I bookmarked these links quite a quite a while ago because I found them helpful, so I'll put them here...

Relationship Chart

Relationship Terms
posted by NYScott at 1:57 PM on April 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yes, no formal relationship here. So, informally:

Your aunt's great-nephew?

(I feel like you also ought to be able to call him your second cousin by marriage once removed, but probably not.)

Alternatively, just call him "Little fella."
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 1:59 PM on April 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Your aunt was imported from another family in order to extend your uncles root functionality. Her sister and associated classes, however, were not ported with her, and are therefore not part of your project file. I mean family.
posted by tracert at 2:02 PM on April 19, 2007 [12 favorites]

I don't think most people have a relationship with the siblings of their relatives' spouses. In my family, the only time those people would have been in the same place is the wedding - one on the bride's side, one on the groom's side (I know this doesn't answer your question, but maybe this is the reason why there's no name for the relationship).
posted by Dec One at 2:03 PM on April 19, 2007

To speak informally, many Chinese and Chinese-American families assign everyone in their extended family (often including sisters of one's mother's-brother's-wife) a fairly generic item:

If it's not a Parent/Grandparent/Sibling/Child/Grandchild, everyone 1 or more generations older is an Aunt or Uncle, and everyone 1 or more generations younger is a Niece or Nephew.

Don't know if this'll help you in your twilight years when the kid strikes it rich mining the moons of Mars, but you may be able to get away with some sort of Grand-Nephew-like term.
posted by chimaera at 2:08 PM on April 19, 2007

I vote for first-cousin-once-removed-in-law. (But I'm sure the estate attorney will see it differently.)
posted by ontic at 2:12 PM on April 19, 2007

I'd just say "sort of nephew," if it were me.
posted by limeonaire at 2:16 PM on April 19, 2007

thanks to everyone for clarifying this..
they really do need to come up with a term for things like this.

Hell, I should make one up. From now on he's my Nephewish. Because he's my nephew...kinda..ish.
posted by carpyful at 2:16 PM on April 19, 2007

I don't think most people have a relationship with the siblings of their relatives' spouses. In my family, the only time those people would have been in the same place is the wedding - one on the bride's side, one on the groom's side (I know this doesn't answer your question, but maybe this is the reason why there's no name for the relationship).

in lots of cultures, that's not true at all. in yiddish, the word for your in-law's family is machetunim (plural, used kind of like "tribe") and in my family, they are some of my favorite relatives...
posted by judith at 2:27 PM on April 19, 2007

the rule of thumb my family and i always go by in cases like this is "this is uncle bobby!" if there isn't a rule that classifies you or names you as his relative, but you feel like a relative, then uncle bobby is always acceptable in my opinion.

so you are the child's uncle bobby.
posted by shmegegge at 2:32 PM on April 19, 2007

The important distinction is genetic/blood relationship. The people you are officially related to are those with whom you share a recent common ancestor.

These are also fixed relationships. What I mean is, no matter how much you detest your second-cousin, they are still your second-cousin (legal declarations notwithstanding) but your uncle's wife is your aunt now but perhaps they will divorce and she will no longer be your aunt. Perhaps your uncle will marry someone new and suddenly the old aunt is replaced with a new aunt. What are you to that previous woman? Nothing.

Ties of friendship may remain (and close friends can be like family, no argument) but she is just the woman who used to be married to your uncle. She is not related to you in the lineage/bloodline/genetic sense. She never was. That also why Royal rules of descent do not pass sideways to another family. When Queen Elizabeth passes on, her son becomes King not her husband.
posted by vacapinta at 2:41 PM on April 19, 2007

In some kin-term systems, he might have a name. None of the diagrams ever go out that far to peripheral relatives like that, but in Hawaiian, for instance, all people of the same generation share a (gendered) term.

Kin Term Systems.

You could, of course, create your own kin-term system. If you give everyone a different term, it gets complicated. Many groups lump to degrees of familiarity - specific terms for people close to us, more generic terms for further people, and no term for very distant relatives, except for purely descriptive ones. At your discretion, referring to the Nephewish as something like 'The Nephewish' brings him closer to you and expresses a closer relationship than blood and this very messy diagram in front of me would suggest.
posted by cobaltnine at 2:53 PM on April 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Something I've always wondered:

Is my sister-in-law's sister also my sister-in-law?
posted by gummo at 3:39 PM on April 19, 2007

gummo: Wikipedia says no. (as does a dictionary I looked in first.)

On the bright side, I just learned my brother-in-law's wife (i.e. my wife's sister-in-law) is, in fact, also my sister-in-law. I say "on the bright side" because I really like my brother-in-law and my (apparent) sister-in-law.
posted by JMOZ at 4:05 PM on April 19, 2007

Your mother's brother is your uncle. Your mother's brother's wife is your aunt. Your mother's brother's wife's sister is not a relative, nor are any of her children.

Hmm, I think you're aunt-by-marriage's sister is your aunt-in-law, and therefore her child is your cousin-in-law.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 4:34 PM on April 19, 2007

In Bangladeshi culture he'd be a distant nephew.
posted by divabat at 5:33 PM on April 19, 2007

If you've moved on from "accurate" to "making things up", cousin-in-law once removed?
posted by mendel at 5:41 PM on April 19, 2007

NYScott: that chart is the bee's knees. Thanks.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:06 PM on April 19, 2007

How does the kid in the OP's FPP figure in Scottish clan terms? I never could figure that out.
posted by davy at 1:25 AM on April 20, 2007

'Uncle'/'nephew' is good enough for friends of the parents who have no legal or genetic connection; shouldn't it be good enough for a friend of the parents who happens also to share an uncle/aunt pair with them? Even if the age difference is substantial, fictive kin get away with it.

I call my cousins' kids my 'little cousins', because 'first cousin once removed' is too long even before people argue for ten minutes about what it means. And come to think, if the age difference between you and this other person is not so big, "cousin" (with scare quotes) would do fine too.

And if anyone asks if you're really relatives, you can rattle off "mother's brother's wife's sister's daughter's son" really fast, because at that point they deserve it :-)
posted by eritain at 12:43 PM on September 12, 2007