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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Paul 77 on Wednesday 16 December 20 14:55 GMT (UK)
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I’m sure this has probably been discussed before somewhere, but for a couple of days now Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk login) has been displaying all my great uncles and aunts as granduncles and grandaunts. (With all the ensuing alterations to higher levels in the tree.)
I emailed in with the obvious question, and had an online chat with one of their supposed “expert users” who said they thought it was an intentional change.
I’ve never heard the terms grand uncle or grand aunt used in UK, has anyone?
Paul
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Grand is the correct term as they are sibs of ones grandparents - but great is often used.
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I would agree with Gadget however 'grand' is not a normal term used in the UK, but it is a normal term in the USA and ancestry is a US company
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Also ensure you were logged into the co.uk site and not .com. That might make a difference.
Pheno
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That wasn’t the reason. (I did mention I was using the .co.uk login earlier.)
Other family members have seen the same change.
Ancestry’s first idea was to suggest I checked I was logged out, deleted cookies and restarted my browser. That seems to be line 1 on their help script, it’s never solved a problem for me yet.
Having said that, it’s been quite common for them to switch you to the US version of the site because of their webpage coding faults, that’s sometimes why you get asked to login again mid session. But I don’t recall that ever changing the relationship names.
Paul
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I've just checked at random and find that I have a person labelled Half great grand aunt. She was a half great great aunt last time I looked.
I am definitely on .co.uk
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For me, this has been an 'off / on' problem for some months. I contacted Ancestry a couple of times and got the usual response, 'log out, delete cookies etc'. They even suggested that I was logged in under '.com' !! My response was that having been with Ancestry for over 15 years, I knew what site I was logged into. I didn't get a response to that!
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I don't see it as a major problem.
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Not a major problem, just a 'niggly one'. As has been said, Ancestry is a USA company and we have to accept things like this. As Gadget posted, 'grand' really is the correct term, it's just that people in the UK prefer to use 'great'.
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My half US great/grand nephew likes to call me his grand aunt - he says it sounds better ;D ;D
(usually he calls me by my first name :-X )
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'grand' really is the correct term, it's just that people in the UK prefer to use 'great'.
Some of you, probably most but not I ;)
I actually get confused if I hear people mention 'great' aunt/uncle as to me that would be the sibling of a g g/parent.
I've always used 'grand' aunt/uncle when referring to siblings of my grand parents.
I'd refer to siblings of my great g/parents as 'great' aunt/uncle which doesn't confuse me.
Annie (Scottish)
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'grand' really is the correct term, it's just that people in the UK prefer to use 'great'.
[/quote
Some of you, probably most but not I ;)
I actually get confused if I hear people mention 'great' aunt/uncle as to me that would be the sibling of a g g/parent.
I've always used 'grand' aunt/uncle when referring to siblings of my grand parents.
I'd refer to siblings of my great g/parents as 'great' aunt/uncle which doesn't confuse me.
Annie (Scottish)
The term grand is used here in Ireland too. Less confusing.
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grandfather - granduncle or great uncle
great grandfather - great granduncle or great great uncle
great great grandfather - great great granduncle or great great great uncle
Using 'grand' across the board is less confusing. It's more consistent.
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Have now had a reply from Ancestry confirming it is an intentional change, (asked for by their staff genealogists).
I still can't see the need for it, but there we are.
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I have always felt that great aunt sounds so much older than grandmother. ::) I have never come across grand aunt, but can see the logic, and I always look for the logic!
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It's American logic though :-\
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Grand is definitely the correct term whatever :P
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/names/aunts-and-uncles-grand-not-great/
and
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/names/aunts-and-uncles-grand-not-great/
Add- I did a course in kinship as part of my first degree and in our system (bifurcate merging) it is grand.
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Grand is definitely the correct term whatever :P
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/names/aunts-and-uncles-grand-not-great/
and
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/names/aunts-and-uncles-grand-not-great/
Add- I did a course in kinship as part of my first degree and in our system (bifurcate merging) it is grand.
Are those two links supposed to be leading to the same article?
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Replace second link with
https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/great-and-grand-aunts/
However there are lots of info on it if Google is used
EVen Wiki:
A great-aunt[1][2]/grandaunt[3] (sometimes written grand-aunt[4]) is the sister of one's grandparent. Despite the popular usage of great-aunt, genealogists consider it more correct to use grandaunt for a grandparent's sister to avoid confusion with earlier generations. Similarly, the female siblings of one's great-grandparents are referred to as great-grandaunts.[5]
Add - link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt
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Grand is definitely the correct term whatever :P
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/names/aunts-and-uncles-grand-not-great/
Although there's a certain logic to 'grand-uncle' and 'grand-aunt', and I can appreciate that in some academic fields it may be preferable for terms to be used consistently across different countries, I have never used these terms myself, and rarely - if ever - heard anyone else do so.
They have been in use for a long time, but the OED has examples of 'great-uncle' and 'great-aunt' going back even further. It notes that the 'grand-' forms are much less common than the 'great-' forms, though commoner in Irish English than in most other varieties.
The question here might be to what extent we allow ourselves to be swayed by those who seek to define what is "correct" by means of arbitrary rules while taking little or no account of historical or common (and in the UK at least, predominant) usage. However reputable Yankee Publishing may be, I don't intend to meekly allow one of their writers to dictate how I should use the English language on this side of the Atlantic.
[ :P ;)]
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Arthur
The correct genealogical and kinship term in our society is Grand. We may use great but that is wrong. Grand is used for those uncles and aunts who are of the same generation as out Grandparents.
Gadget
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I am a great aunt to my two great nieces. I don’t feel old enough to be referred to as great aunt let alone a grand aunt. Does that mean they are my grand nieces now?
I must admit I can see the logic but it doesn’t sound right. I will stick to what I have always called my relatives.
Regards
Panda ;D ;D ;D >:( ;)
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And I must go and edit my FH program so that it has railroad laborers, marriage licenses, Durham County and various other alternate terms.
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We don't say "great-father", so why do we say "great-aunt"?
Don't you find it's too easy to make a mistake if you stick with "great" instead of "grand".
Too easy to assume that great-great grandfather and great-great aunt are the same generation.
If you call them great-great grandfather and great grandaunt, it's much more obvious that they are not the same generation - because the same generation has the same number of greats.
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Personally I don't find it a problem - just count the number of 'gr-' words.
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One upside of Ancestry's change is that the sister of my 2nd great-grandmother is now my 2nd great-grandaunt, whereas before she was my 3rd great-aunt. See the attached diagram.
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What the American system (circa 1820-30) discounts is that the older British system (circa 1650-1660) is counting through the steps of the relationship not the generations.
There are only 2 steps to a grandparent, i.e. subject to parent 1st step, parent to grandparent 2nd step.
There are also 2 steps to an aunt or uncle, i.e. subject to parent 1st step, parent to sibling (aunt,uncle), 2nd step. In other words the term Aunt or Uncle replaces the term Grand.
The next step (3rd step) logically is therefore the greats; great grandfather, great grandmother, great uncle, great aunt.
In addition DNA (centimorgan chart ) has actually displayed the British system is the more correct way of describing such relationships.
Cheers
Guy
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Best wishes, Guy.
you say:
n other words the term Aunt or Uncle replaces the term Grand.
We're talking about the next stage. Aunt and uncle are the siblings of one's parents in our bifurcate merging system of kinship terms. Grand A and U are the siblings of our grand parents.
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I don't have my Anthopology Kinship text books to hand but ...
Kinship Terminologies
Kinship is one of these more complex systems of culture. All human groups have a kinship terminology, a set of terms used to refer to kin. Many parts of life are impacted by kinship, and in most societies kinship relations influence things like who one can and can not marry, who one must show respect to, who one can joke with, and who one can count on in a crisis.
Kinship terminologies vary in different societies from as few as twelve to more than fifty terms. English kinship terminology is in the middle, and contains the following principal terms:
mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister
uncle, aunt, nephew, niece
cousin (differently elaborated in different English speaking cultures)
grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter
granduncle, grandaunt, grandniece, grandnephew (in many dialects)
plus
great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother etc.
and
great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather etc.
http://era.anthropology.ac.uk/Kinship/kinIntro.html