Ancestral Nomenclature (Izzat ra right word?).....

[Tusker]

Y'know, sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who actually thinks like this.....

But if you look at your ancestors, you start off with parents, then you have GRANDparents, then you move on to GREAT grandparents etc etc.

Now since the people who invented relationships managed to come up with stoatters like 2nd cousins 6 times removed, and 5th Great Grandnephew or niece and everything in between, you'd think they'd have come up with something much better than, "See my GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-Granny? She wiz the captain o' a whalin' ship, so she wiz....." I mean it does sound a wee bit kinda "forced", doesn't it?

Why not call them (just for example) Grandparents, GREAT grandparents, then WONDERFUL Grandparents, then maybe TERRIFIC Grandparents, and move up to to SUPER Grandparents, and from there to ABSOLUTELY......well, I think you get the idea. You're stepping it up a notch each time (just like the levels in genealogy) instead of endlessly repeating "Great" umpteen times.....

.....An' before somebiddy says "My grandparents were ALL of those" -- WE KNOW!

As I said though --- sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who actually...

[Russell]

Hi Tusker

Funny you should raise this today! My wife and I were just jawin' about 2nd cousins and the rest today. We figured that the names they used werena for us plebs. It was just a wey tae sort oot wha should get the loot when the auld yin (Sir Snotty) snuffed it.
Crown jools to my eldest son;
second best bed to my husband unless he pre-deceases me.
Horses to my daughter
That univesity place in the N.East of Scotland to my grandson

That kind o' thing
For us its grannies Wallie dugs
Twa flying ducks (wan broke)
The brass companion set to onybody that wants it
The wag-at-the-wa' (its broke but must be worth somehing.

I'll stick tae grannieX5 or X5 grannie till i huv nae fingers left tae coont.

Russell

[CatrionaL]

Russell

Look efter yer granny's wallie dugs. They've become somethin'o' a collector's piece in recent years. Should be worth somethin' noo.

Catriona

[Russell]

Hi Catriona

She never left wallie dugs but she left something priceless - lots of photographs. She did have a mangle though - a big cast iron monster and that was just wheeled round to the scrap man next to Hibs ground in Easter Road. A real collectors item now

We live - but do we learn???

Russell

[Tracey]

I dont get the 2x - once removed cousin stuff
I call my dads cousins aunties and uncles in "" but not to their face ! as i dont really know what they are in technical relation to me Im sure (hoping) someone will tell me

[Malcolm]

What in the name of...... is a "wallie dug"?. Now that I have a mind, what oh what, is "a wag-at-the-wa' "?

[AndrewP]

What in the name of...... is a wallie dug.

A wallie (or wally) dug is a china dog.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

[Malcolm]

Andrew, that was so quick you must have been reading my mind. You must be psychedelic

[Russell]

Hi Malcom

Imagine a grandfather clock which has had the mechanism taken out and hung on the wall.

Pendulum free to go tick-tock
Weights dangling in mid-air
A central bit that could be set to go off at gettin-up time
That's a Wag-at-the-wa'

The poor mans grandfather clock.
Wllie dugs were white porcelain about six inches tall with simplified features picked out in black. One looked east the other west at each end of the mantleshelf usually just under the gas wall lights so they looked good. Almost as tacky as the set of three ducks that were flying across
nearly every wall in the fifties. yeuch!

Russell

[Russell]

PS
Andrew must be going psychotic trying to keep tabs on some of the posts on this site

OTT but the height of Everest

Russell