10th cousin 4 times removed? Who came up with this stuff?

Over the years I've heard people discussing relations with cousins using a set of numbers, but I never understood what it was about, and I didn't care to find out.

I'm sure lots of people actually know the system and would laugh at my ignorance, and that's OK. but I have talked to people who don't understand it either. Turns out it's  pretty simple, but the implications fascinate me.

To start, people who share the same grandparents are first cousins. You know that. The somewhat confusing part is that more than likely, your cousins from your dad's side are different from those on your mum's side. My dad had no siblings, so I have no cousins from that side. Mother's parents had three children, and her brothers had a total of five kids. They are all my first cousins. 

The cousin numbering follows from that. Me and my cousins are in the same generation, the first generation after our grandparents to qualify as cousins, hence first cousins. 

My kids and my cousins' kids are in the next generation together, so they are second cousins. All their children would be the third generation, so third cousins. And so it goes. 

A helpful suggestion I ran across is to count the number of "g's" to figure it out. One g -- grandparent -- means first cousin. Two "g's" -- great grandparent -- second cousin, etc.

I banged up this chart as a visual to help with this:

This you figure your cousin relationship when you're working backward from you. I mentioned in that last post that Nancy Reagan was my 11th cousin. Actually, she's my mother's 11th cousin. Count your way up the tree to the common great-to-the-x grandparents, subtract two, and that's the number cousin, as long as they are in the same generation.

That would make Ron Reagan and Patti Davis 12th cousins. So what's my relationship to Nancy? That's where the "removed" part comes in. I am a generation removed from Nancy, so she's my 11th cousin once removed. My kids are her 11th cousins twice removed. You can see how it goes.

You find all kinds of charts and explanations on the internet. 

As for the implications, I found this piece interesting: Everyone on earth is your cousin by Tim Urban.

The writer points out that the higher you go in your family tree, the more people you share genes with. As that spreads out to all the people they are related to, this means a couple of things. 

One is that it shouldn't be all that hard to find someone in your family tree who's famous. The other is you stand a good chance of being distantly related to people you come into contact with. This second idea fits nicely with the biological and religious concept that we all share a common origin.

Your friend's crazy uncle is at some level your crazy cousin. We don't always get along as families, but maybe we'd try a little harder if we quit looking at people as strangers and more as family members.