Family history research

The twentieth entry is a linha colateral, and it is where English stops translating and starts counting. Portuguese names a cousin by degree — primo em segundo grau, primo em terceiro grau — and one number says how far sideways to walk. English uses two numbers for two different questions and asks them in one breath. The ordinal counts back to the shared ancestor: « first cousins » share a grandparent, « second cousins » a great-grandparent, « third cousins » a great-great-grandparent. « Removed » counts something else entirely, the generations by which the two people are out of step. « A first cousin once removed » is therefore either the child of a first cousin or a parent’s first cousin, and the phrase does not say which; it says only that one of the two stands a generation lower on the chart. Nothing in it is about distance, and nothing in it is about being sent away, which is what « removed » suggests to anybody meeting it for the first time. Read the two numbers apart and the whole collateral line falls open.