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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 March 10

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March 10

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Double cousins

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A double cousin is when either a person's father and mother are brother and sister of another person's father and mother respectively (parallel double cousins) or each person's father is a brother of the other person's mother (cross double cousins). Are there any known examples of double cousins? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 17:48, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I have some double cousins, as my father's sister is married to my mother's brother. A more remarkable case is that of Chang and Eng Bunker, famous conjoined twins who married two sisters, both of whom had children. - Lindert (talk) 17:57, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Check out this family. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 18:19, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Googling "twins marrying twins" brings up a lot of hits, including one where twins were married to twins by twin priests. Loraof (talk) 19:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They won't all be relevant hits, but searching just inside Wikipedia for double cousin brings up 7,639 hits. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 19:12, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So we have anecdotal and famous/notable examples. Our WP coverage of double cousins is at Cousin#Additional_terms. Some related info at Coefficient of relationship which shows that double cousins are as closely related as half-siblings. But 3/4 siblings are even more closely related, Sibling#3.2F4_sibling gives some examples, a famous one involving the Jackson 5. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:10, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
They call it "line breeding" when it's used for prize race horses, but "inbreeding" when it's low class humans. I don't know what they call it for royalty, but pedigree collapse also illustrates some famous double cousins and other close relatives. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:05, 11 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Personal experience, but an interesting slant. My family knows a family with double cousins (brothers married sisters) and this came in very handy when one of the children was diagnosed with a severe illness requiring a bone marrow transplant. His own sister was not a match, but his two double cousins were both perfect matches. Extremely fortuitous for the lad, to say the least. Matt Deres (talk) 17:41, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For reference, see also cousin marriage. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:07, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]