In the never-ending argument between nature and nurture, one thing is clear: both factors are critical in shaping who you are. Together, they determine how you approach life events and who you become, which means your relatives play a major role in the whole picture that is you.
Your family relationship chart holds secrets that influence your choices, personality, looks, and health, and compiling it can be life affirming. You might be able to name your closest familial relationships, but how far back can you trace your family names? Family trees are elaborate kinship charts documenting close relatives and distant ancestors. Seeing those family ties drawn out in front of you is an eye-opening way to visualize everyone’s relationship to each other and view how you fit into a bigger picture.
Even with a list of names on a family tree, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint exactly how people are related once you start looking beyond your nuclear family. That’s where Ancestry steps in.
Understanding Family Relationships
Families are complex, and so too are family trees. They can come in just about every size and shape, from married couples with children to blended family units that quickly turn a relatively simple family relationship chart into one with numerous overarching branches. While complex, these family units mean there are more people to love and honor.
Nuclear families include a couple or single parent and their dependent children. As those children grow up, they usually separate from their parents to start their own nuclear families.
Extended family refers to everyone else in a family tree outside the nuclear unit. In the United States, extended family members include grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, and other family members related by blood or marriage. As children in these nuclear families grow up and leave their parents’ homes to start their own units, their parents become extended family as well.However, family norms differ around the world, and some cultures may include grandparents, or even aunts and uncles, as part of their core familial unit.
In ablended family, the couple has children from previous relationships together in one household. These children become stepsiblings to each other, and if their parents choose to have more children, halfsiblings enter the mix. Half siblings share one parent with each other. Stepsiblings share no common parents, but their parents are married or committed to each other.
Family Relationship Charts
Family relationship charts help you identify relationships between two people. You might easily be able to point to your aunt and your great-grandmother, but how is your cousin twice removed related to your nephew? A family relationship chart can help you track down the common ancestor shared between two people, so you can identify how they’re related to each other. This is useful when building family trees, especially as you start branching out further from yourself or the part of the family you’re researching.
You can generate family tree relationship charts in all sorts of ways, with some common options being ancestral or pedigree charts, descendant charts, and family group charts.
A pedigree chart is another way of tracing certain branches of a family tree, working backward compared to a descendant chart. Your pedigree chart focuses on people related to you. It reveals your parents, your parents’ parents, and so on.
A descendant chart for family relationships starts with one member of the family and lists the descendants of that one person. For example, a descendant chart for Abraham Lincoln would list his four children, Thomas, Robert, Edward, and William. The list would continue with his grandchildren, his grandchildren’s children, and so on, until reaching the modern generation of descendants.
Family group charts let you trace family trees in groups to help you fill out an extended family relationship chart. They record you, your spouse, and your children, as well as other family groups you’re related to. These can help you to begin identifying various familial relations and fill up your family tree.
Building Your Family Tree
In the past, genealogy required hours of researching, charting, and documenting. Nowadays, charting your family tree couldn’t be easier, thanks to the tools offered by Ancestry. The AncestryDNA® + Family Tree Package enables you to submit a DNA sample for Ancestry to analyze. The data you’ll receive can help you to build a personalized chart that includes family members identified through your own DNA. This can be particularly useful for overcoming brick walls in your genealogy research, so you can fill in gaps in your family tree, which can be caused by numerous issues, including lost records, unsure parentage or adoption, unrecorded name changes, misspellings, and even aliases.
With an Ancestry membership, you can build a family tree, gaining access to the world’s largest online collection of family history records to fill in any gaps. Ancestry offers free lessons to guide you through every step of the way. Browsing these lessons takes you from starting your tree to building it, finding records, and collaborating with tools and resources offered by Ancestry to fill in more branches.
Another useful tool is Ancestry Hints®, which suggests records, photos and public family trees that may contain information about people in your family tree. Each hint appears as a leaf in your family tree. You can review hints and add what you discover to your family tree or reject.
Family Vocabulary Words With Examples: Nuclear Family
Once you understand the relationships and what they mean, it becomes simpler to understand your family tree, which begins with your nuclear family. For the following examples, let’s use the fictional person Jim.
- Parent:In the traditional sense, parents are people who have biological children or legally adopt a child. Although parents often consist of a mother and father, it’s becoming increasingly common for LGBTQ+ couples to adopt or seek alternative means to have a child of their own, resulting in two-mother, two-father or nonbinary households. Jim’s parents may be his mother and father, his mothers, his fathers, or a gender-neutral name chosen by the family. Some individuals also become single parents by choice. For example, if Jim’s mother used a sperm donor to conceive, Jim may have no known father at all. It’s also common for grandparents to step in and become the unofficial parents of a child born to their own child if that child is too young or otherwise unable to care for a baby. In this situation, Jim may consider his grandparents to be mom and dad.
- Child:A child is the offspring of a set of parents or a child who has been adopted by a set of parents. Jim’s children are his sons and daughters, and he’s their parent.
- Sibling:Siblings share the same parents. Jim’s siblings are his brother and sister, who were born to the same mother and father as he was.
- Spouse: A spouse is a significant other that someone is legally married to. Jim’s wife is his spouse. Jim is his wife’s husband.
- Stepfamily: Stepfamilyis the nuclear family you’re related to by marriage, but not by blood or legal adoption. Jim’s stepfather, for example, is the wife of his mother who is not his father. Jim’s stepchildren include his wife’s children who are not his biological or adopted children. Jim’s children’s stepsiblings are the children of Jim’s wife who do not share a parent with them.
- Half sibling: Halfsiblingsshare one parent with each other instead of two. For example, the child between Jim’s mother and his stepfather is his halfsibling.
Explaining family tree relationships can seem complex at first glance, especially if you decide to trace several generations. Marriage brings in-laws into the equation, which adds a whole new level of complication to family trees. After all, with each marriage, two family trees become intertwined. That’s why tools and resources offered by Ancestry, such a guide to defining familial relationships and kinship terms, can help.
Family Vocabulary Words With Examples: Extended Family
Extended family adds an extra layer of complexity to your family chart, unfurling more branches and bringing together generations of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and their own nuclear families.
- Grandparent:Grandparents are the parents of the parents in a nuclear family unit. Jim’s children’s Grandparents are Jim’s parents.
- Great-grandparent: Great-grandparents are the parents of grandparents. Jim’s grandparents are his children’s great-grandparents.
- Aunt:An aunt is the female sibling of a parent or the wife of a parent’s sibling. Jim’s sister is his children’s aunt. Jim’s father’s or mother’s sister is his aunt.
- Uncle:An uncle is the male sibling of a parent or the husband of a parent’s sibling. Jim’s brother is his children’s uncle, and Jim’s father’s or mother’s brother is his uncle.
- First cousin: First cousins are the children of one’s aunts and uncles. Jim’s aunts’ and uncles’ children are his cousins. The children of Jim’s brother and sister are Jim’s children’s cousins.
- Niece: A niece is the female child of one’s siblings. Jim’s brother’s and sister’s daughters are his nieces.
- Nephew:A nephew is the male child of one’s siblings. Jim’s brother’s and sister’s sons are his nieces.
- In-Law: In-laws describe the equivalent family member of your spouse. Jim’s mother-in-law, for example, is his spouse’s mother. Jim’s brother-in-law is his spouse’s brother.
Terms, such as aunt and uncle, are traditional and refer to people who identify as men or women. Today, there’s a growing number of people embracing gender as a spectrum or social construct. They might identify as nonbinary or genderqueer and use family labels such as auncle (a parent’s sibling or their spouse), nibling (the child of one’s sibling), or pibling (the sibling of a parent).
Family Vocabulary Words With Examples: Removed Generations
Family trees start getting trickier when you introduce removed relatives, second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.,) cousins and grandaunts and granduncles. Here’s a simple guide on how to label removed generations within your family:
- Once removed: A family member once removed is one generation away from you. If that generation is earlier than yours, they’re ascendant cousins. If they’re from a later generation than yours, they’re descendant cousins. For example, Jim’s cousin’s child is his descendant first cousin once removed.
- Twice removed: When there’s a difference of two generations, that family member is considered twice removed. Jim’s cousin’s grandchild is Jim’s first cousin twice removed.
- Second cousin: Second cousins share the same great-grandparents. Jim’s second cousins are the children of his ascendant first cousin once removed.
- Third cousin: Third cousins share great-great-grandparents. Jim’s third cousins are the children of his ascendant second cousin once removed and the grandchildren of Jim’s ascendant first cousin twice removed. They’re also the great-grandchildren of Jim’s great-grandaunts and granduncles.
- Grandaunt and granduncle: Grandaunts and granduncles are the siblings of grandparents. Jim’s grandaunt is the sister of one of his grandparents, and the parents of Jim’s ascendant first cousin once removed.
- Great-grandaunt and great-granduncle: Great-grandaunts and granduncles are the siblings of great-grandparents. Jim’s great-granduncle is the brother of one of his great-grandparents, the father of Jim’s ascendant first cousin twice removed, and the great-grandparent of Jim’s third cousins.
Using the right terms can help you better understand and build an accurate family tree. When you know exactly how someone is related to one person, it becomes easier to start placing them on the tree and putting together the bigger picture. If you’re looking for a term that wasn’t listed above, check out the Glossary of Genealogical Terms for many more.
Exploring Your Family Tree With Ancestry
If you have questions about family and how nature has shaped your identity, using Ancestry to build your family tree can be life-changing. Instead of compiling several charts by hand, the availableresources and tools at Ancestry include an easy to use relationship chart maker. Once compiled, you can click a button to toggle between views and see your family represented in a pedigree chart, descendent chart, or family group record.
Creating a family tree is a satisfying way to visualize your lineage, feel a deep sense of personal identity, and understand your connections to the past. To get started exploring your personal history and uncovering your family relations, begin building your family tree today with afree trial from Ancestry.
Sources
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-family
- https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/extended-family
- https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-a-blended-family
- https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nuclear_family
- https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/countingcousins-family-relationshippdf/open
- https://www.siue.edu/~jandris/genealogy/html/connections2.html
- https://www.archives.gov/files/research/genealogy/charts-forms/ancestral-chart.pdf
- https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Pedigree
- https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/the-lincoln-family.htm
- https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED418728.pdf
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parent
- https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/same-sex-parents-us/
- https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sibling
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spouse
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stepfamily
- https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/01/more-children-live-with-half-siblings-than-previously-thought.html
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grandparent
- https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/great-grandparent
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aunt
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uncle
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cousin
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-were-watching-nibling
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nephew
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niece
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in-law
- https://www.dictionary.com/e/aunt-uncle-niece-nephew-words/
- Image 1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alberta_archives/12525025303/
- Image 2:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romanov_tree_(I.Nikitin).jpg
- Image 3: https://www.loc.gov/item/2014682477/
