LogFAQs > #965444868

Mensis posted...

Best advice for being an uncle is get super annoying gifts that the kid will love and will drive their parents nuts.

Toys that make tons of noise are always great for this. There's definitely a sort of visceral delight in getting younger kids something you know that you'll have to suffer from for a few hours, but their parents will be suffering from for weeks.

In my family, this was always kazoos.



xGhostchantx posted...

great uncle* my dude, your uncle would be their grand great uncle.

the familial relation lines are confusing af.

No, Great Uncle and Grand Uncle (or Granduncle) are pretty much interchangeable terms. They both refer to the siblings of your grandparents.

And there's no such thing as a Grand Great Uncle - that would be a Great Grand Uncle (or Great Granduncle, or Great-Grand-Uncle, etc). Which would be the siblings of your Great-Grandfather.

It might be a regional thing though, or maybe just a family thing - I know in my family we always used Great Aunt/Great Uncle (though when speaking to the actual person we'd just call them "Aunt So-and-So" rather than calling them Great Aunt). I don't think I've ever known anyone who referred to a relative as a Grand Uncle or Aunt except in the most formal context.

And I wouldn't say family lines are all that confusing. Especially if you ignore the "twice removed" aspect of things from cousins, and just call your "Second Cousin Twice Removed" your cousin. The extra terminology mostly only exists to clarify genealogy for people who are interested in reconstructing full family trees, but it's not all that necessary in general parlance. I generally just call my First Cousin my cousin, my Second Cousins my cousins, and my First Cousins Twice Removed as my cousins.