FTF Post on Cousins is up

We all have them.  Some we like.  Some we haven't seen in years.  Some we have never even meet until we started doing family history.  Cousins, they are all around us.  My latest post at Family Tree Firsts is up and it is all about discovering these wonderful, and mysterious, people.

The picture included for this piece is one I found several years ago.  It was in a box of stuff belonging to my Grandma Arvin.  Attached to it was a hand written legend labeling who in it my mother knew at that time.  Her handwriting was that of her high school days: curly, loopy, and very much like a teenage girl's script.  I kept expecting to see the heart over the i's, but they never appeared.  Not my mother's style.

Many of these people are no longer with us today.  The last of my grandfather's brothers died last fall and my grandmother's last sibling died over a decade ago.  Those little kids you see?  Yeah, they are all older than me!  My mom is so young, and her brother very much the long haired college hippie (Love you Uncle J!) that he was at that time.

Thinking about this picture, and the post I wrote, really had me delving into what does the word cousin really mean? According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary cousin means:

1 a: a child of one's uncle or aunt b: a relative descended from one's grandparent or more remote ancestor by two or more steps and in a different line c: kinsman, relative <a distant cousin>

2: one associated with or related to another : counterpart

3: used as a title by a sovereign in addressing a nobleman

4: a person of a race or people ethnically or culturally related <our English cousins>

I like number 4.  Do you think genealogists could be considered culturally related?  Why or why not?  Food for thought... cousin.