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From: (marshall kirk)
Subject: Re: Nephew double meaning
Date: 10 Jan 2004 15:10:28 -0800
References: <Z%CLb.429$ir1.2691@newsfep4-glfd.server.ntli.net>


At various times -- as someone further down this thread pointed out,
it's hard to see how one could be sure of the actual, as opposed to
the attestable, limits of those times -- the terms "nephew" and
"cousin" were used in various, and sometimes overlapping, senses ...
the underlying referent-in-common being a relationship between x and y
that passes through some intermediate individual. Thus, *nepos* could
be and was used for both "nephew" in the modern sense (son of my sib,
who is the intermediate); and "grandson" (son of my child, again the
intermediate).

The vagueness of *nepos*, by the way, may lie at the root of certain
strange errors in Visitation pedigrees. (I refer here to honest
errors, not outright lies, which do also occur; tho' probably not
quite as often as the understandably embittered student of such may
tend to conclude.) For example, more than one Visitation pedigree has
one Godfrey Fulnetby as grandson of Sir Lionel Dymoke, *via* an
unnamed daughter. This was obviously chronologically impossible, as
the dates of both could be pinned down to narrow ranges, and simply
wouldn't permit an intercalary generation. Yet there *was* evidence
connecting the two; for example, Godfrey played an important role in
Sir Lionel's will. Eventually, I discovered another (and apparently
better informed) Visitation pedigree that made Godfrey son of Lionel's
sister (here explicitly named as "Jane"), and thus Lionel's nephew.
It took a while to dawn on me that the pedigrees making Godfrey
Lionel's grandson likely were constructed on the basis of family
muniments, in Latin, that characterized Godfrey as Lionel's *nepos*
... and that this was taken to mean "grandson," when what had
originally been intended was "nephew."


"W Johnson" <> wrote in message news:<Z%CLb.429$>...
> I thought I'd just post a fact that some may not be aware of, that probably
> roughly up to the 17th century nephew could also mean grandson(as in the
> will of Thomas Sackville 1st Earl of Dorset).
>
> Will

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