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­IF you get confused when you are trying to work out what sort of cousin your grandmother’s aunt’s son’s daughter is to you – you are not alone. It can feel overwhelming sometimes – especially when it involves several generations.

And when you start looking at extended family over five or ten generations it can feel even more impossible to work out. But, luckily there’s a simple way to work it out.

Firstly, the main point is to consider that cousins are related to each other through their relationship to a shared grandparent no matter where in the extened family tree they fall. We are all familiar with the basic relationship – our 1^st cousins share a grandparent with us and our parents are siblings.

This can be shown simply like this:

Share Grandparent = cousins

Share Great Grandparent = 2^nd cousins

Share Great Great Grandparent =  3^rd cousins

Share 3^rd Great Great Grandparent = 4^th cousins

Share 4^th Great Great Grandparent = 5^th cousins

Share 5^th Great Great Grandparent = 6^th cousins

The next step is to think of how this changes if one generation is different to the other – not in age, but the amount of steps between them and the grandparent who is their link. If this differs we have a ‘removal’. This means one generation difference is once removed and a difference of five would be five times removed.

Lets say for example you find you share a common grandparent with Kate Middleton stretching quite far back and you are trying to work out your realtionship to the future King of England – Prince George. I will use fictional names for this example and will mostly use a line of brothers to keep it simple:

Granny Jenny Adam (common ancestor)

John Adam             brothers                  James Adam

Ben Adam              1^st cousins              Bill Adam

Simon Adam         2^nd cousins             Sam Adam

Mark Adam           3^rd cousins             Matt Adam

Paul Adam             4^th cousins             Penny Adam m. A. Middleton

You                           5^th cousins             John Middleton

Charles  Adam     6^th cousins             Kate Middleton

Fred Adam             7^th cousins             Prince George

It’s easy  to see that "You" are 5^th cousins to Kate’s father as you are both in the same generation. This makes you 5^th cousins once removed to Kate and 5^th cousins twice removed to the future King of England. Your grandchild, Fred Adam, is then 7^th cousins to Prince George.

But, before you get too excited there are thousands of other people who are similarily related.

Let’s look at how it works across very different generations using an example of a common ancestor with Thomas Boleyn who was Ann Boleyn’s father and Elizabeth I’s grandfather. Let’s say you have a direct line to Thomas Boleyn so that your distant ancestor was Anne Boleyn’s sibling and another was a 1^st Cousin of Elizabeth I.

Although this was many years ago you just need to count the generations back to the grandchild of Thomas Boleyn on your side of the family that kept their heads long enough for you exist. The generations in between would be those that are removed. Again for simplicity we will use fictional names and keep the line of descent direct down the male line:

 

                                                      Thomas Boleyn

John Boleyn                             siblings                                      Anne Boleyn

James Boleyn                          1^st cousins                                Elizabeth I

Sam Boleyn                             1^st cousins 1x removed (a Great grandchild)

Mark Boleyn                           1^st cousins 2x removed (a 2^nd Great grandchild)

William Boleyn                      1^st cousins 3x removed

Fred Boleyn                            1^st cousins 4x removed

Ned Boleyn                              1^st cousins 5x removed

Charles Boleyn                      1^st cousins 6x removed

Henry Boleyn                         1^st cousins 7x removed

Harry Boleyn                          1^st cousins 8x removed

Ben Boleyn                              1^st cousins 9x removed

Albert Boleyn                         1^st cousins 10x removed

George Boleyn                       1^st cousins 11x removed

Adam Boleyn                          1^st cousins 12x removed

YOU                                            1^st cousins 13x removed

The easieast way to calculate this is to work out the relationship to the grandparent and note the difference for the times removed. For example in the fictional case above Thomas Boleyn is your 13^th Grandfather and there are 13 steps between you and the first cousins – you are the 13^th great grandchild.

If Elizabeth had had children who had also had childern right down to your generation her descendant would have been your 14^th Cousin.

For a simple cousins calculator table press to enlarge: