I wrote yesterday about Sam and his some-flavor-of-cousin Kelly, and voiced some confusion over just how the whole cousin thing is defined.

Seems I wasn't alone in cousinfusion, so as a service to the members of the public who aren't clear ... both of us ... on when someone's degreed or removed, I looked it up.

Here's a link that confused the heck out of me with the most amazing graphs and such, but did include the following fairly clear explanation of how to classify the cuz:

... when cousins have children, you add a degree. Children of first cousins are second cousins.
Children of second cousins are third cousins.
Children of third cousins are fourth cousins, ...

When you go up or down a generation level, you add a removed but you don't change the degree.
Your father's "Nth" (1st, 2nd, 3rd . . .) cousin is your "Nth" cousin too, but once removed.
Your grandfather's "Nth" cousin is your "Nth" cousin twice removed.
Your great-grandfather's "Nth" cousin is your "Nth" cousin three times removed, ...

You can keep adding removeds and degrees:
Your grandfather's second cousin is your second cousin twice removed.
Your great-grandfather's third cousin is your third cousin three times removed ...

Now, my family is pretty easy to configure according to these rules, but Mark's presents a more complicated convolution of the cousin cavalcade ... his father is one of the oldest of twelve children, so there are cousins on top of cousins, and since Mark is on the older end of the age range, he has baby cousins being raised along side the babies of cousins.

His family is easy when compared to some here, though. One friend of ours is the son of a man who fathered somewhere between 62 and 81 children, so trying to calculate sibs is one thing, but cousins? Sheesh. You've got the fulls and the halves, then there are the halves that matched up with other halves, and so on. Let's just say that in a country this small, people in that family have to take a very close look at what floats up in the dating pool.

Apparently, the guy that owns the cousin site has few hobbies and even fewer friends, as he asks everyone to post the link so he and some other guy can play, "My hits are bigger than yours."

I'll think I'll send this post to all of my cousins ... or at least those who've not been removed more than once ... and maybe even a few of Mark's, so the degree-of-relation-king can win the contest this month. Merry Christmas ...?