Kinship Vocabulary - The Joy of Learning New Words

To say I am excited by the release of the 1926 Census of Ireland is an understatement. I have spent the past year researching the background to the census and what it contains. I have written an article on the topic, published in the spring issue of Irish Roots magazine and I presented to local genealogical societies.

I have learned so much about this resource and I can put it all to good use. I am ready to find my family members who were alive at the time and therefore should be enumerated in it. Today, as I made the final preparations for my searches, I had a bonus learning experience. I am a lover of words and today, I learned some new words to add to my kinship vocabulary.

In genealogy, we refer to direct ancestors and collateral relatives. Today I broadened my kinship terms while building my 1926 Census Search Tracker in excel. In my search table I created a column for the Type of Relative. Initially I used the terms direct ancestor, collateral relative, and in-law to describe my relationship with the people on my list. As I looked at the term collateral, I wondered if there were corresponding words for direct ancestors and in-laws the same class. So I looked it up and there are corresponding words! (See Table 1) I have now applied them to my census search table…just to add to the fun of anticipating the searches.