Ancestry Daily News
  Sherry Irvine, FSA (Scot) – 10/4/2005

What Did Cousin Mean 150 Years Ago?

It is a census entry which usually sparks the question. You wonder exactly what it means when the record shows a resident of a household as a cousin, or niece, or sister-in-law or any one of the many relationship terms in the English language.

Old Usage

Cousin was taken to mean a collateral relation more distant than a brother or sister, which leaves scope for the word referring to just about anyone who is not a sibling or in the direct blood line. Similarly, the word niece was not always so precise in meaning; back in the 1500s it referred to any female relative outside the immediate family. It could have been used to refer to a granddaughter.

Have you wondered about the use of the term "step? This word is derived from Old English (OE), arising from a root that appears in OE for bereaved and orphan. That makes sense, for the situation arises from second marriages, often due to the death of a parent. My mother was brought up by her father and step-mother because her own mother died when my mother was six years old. This second union produced one child, my mother’s half-brother. Had her stepmother had a child by a previous marriage this would have been my mother’s step-brother or step-sister.

The census is unlikely to show such distinctions as “step” or “half”; in other words, what appears as the son of the head of the household may be a son by a previous marriage or a step-son. Be prepared to find kinship terms like cousin and in-law used for situations other than what we assume by these words today. In older documents you may see the term “cousin-german.” People with this relationship had a common grandparent, what we know as first cousins.

The Blood Connection May Not Be There

Kinship terms are used now and were used in the past where, in fact, no blood connection exists. We encounter this all the time because most of us are either an aunt or an uncle by marriage. My brother’s children refer to my husband as “uncle” but there is no relationship other than his connection to me. Also, many of us use aunt and uncle affectionately for elderly cousins, where a close relationship needs to be expressed or some acknowledgement given to age difference. Close family friends sometimes, too, are called aunt or uncle.

Consanguinity and Affinity

My research into terminology of kinship took me into several reference books and to a number of websites. Consanguinity is defined as individuals who are descended from the same ancestor, and who are therefore related by blood. Affinity is the word for relations who lack a blood connection, step-sisters for example.

The Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches have set out for centuries who may marry whom, expressed in a Table of Kindred and Affinity or as degrees of consanguinity. There is not space here to go into the subject more deeply; it would lead on to considering church law, otherwise known as canon law. Most of what we are familiar with regarding kinship arose from church laws. In fact, “in-laws,” those relations we often like to abuse, acquired their name because of the definition of the connections in canon law.

Conclusion

Relationships interest many people besides genealogists. It is understandable that lawyers, geneticists and medical people take an interest. I discovered along the way that mathematicians have taken hold of the topic too and actually created formulae related to kinship and consanguinity. I am relieved that I am unlikely to find a use for an algebraic sort of expression of cousinly connections. Anthropologists are another group taking an interest in kinship and their studies of the topic in a cultural setting could be interesting.

Whether or not these byways of kinship raise your curiosity, it is worthwhile to learn more of the subject. A good starting point is Wikipedia, where you can find several articles on kinship and related topics. Search engines turn up university resources on the subject, and fat dictionaries provide all sorts of interesting examples of usage through the centuries.

A final word of caution--experienced genealogists learn to be ready for all sorts of pitfalls and kinship terminology is one of them. It is a good idea to be wary and avoid quick conclusions as to the precise meaning of a relationship recorded in a register, record, or document.

Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA Scot is an author, teacher, and lecturer specializing in English, Scottish, and Irish family history. She is the author of Your English Ancestry (2d ed., 1998) and Researching Scottish Ancestry (2003), and she is a contributor to several publications. Since 1996, she has been a study tour leader, course coordinator, and instructor for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at University. She teaches online at MyFamily.com. Recently she served a two-year term as president of the Association of Professional Genealogists.