1st Cousin 2x Removed: The Two People It Can Be, and What Your DNA Shows
A 1st cousin 2x removed is either your grandparent's first cousin or your first cousin's grandchild. Both directions use that identical label, and both share roughly 3.125% of their DNA with you on average, which usually lands somewhere near 210 to 230 centimorgans. The "2x removed" part is shorthand for "twice removed," and it records one fact only: the two of you sit two generations apart on the family tree.
This is one of the most misidentified relationships in genealogy, for a reason that has nothing to do with counting. Its DNA numbers are almost perfectly identical to a second cousin's, so a test result cannot separate the two. Sorting it out takes tree work.
Who a 1st Cousin 2x Removed Actually Is
There are exactly two ways to hold this relationship, and they sit on opposite sides of you on the tree.
Two generations above you. Your grandparent's first cousin. Your grandmother or grandfather and that person share grandparents. You are two generations below your grandparent, so you are two removals away from their first cousin.
Two generations below you. Your first cousin's grandchild. You and their grandparent share grandparents. That grandchild is two generations below you.
There is also a third route that lands in the same place: your parent's first cousin once removed is your first cousin twice removed. It is the same relationship reached by a different description, which is worth knowing because family stories often arrive in that longer form.
| If the person is... | They are your... | And you are their... |
|---|---|---|
| Your grandparent's first cousin | 1C2R | 1C2R |
| Your first cousin's grandchild | 1C2R | 1C2R |
| Your parent's first cousin once removed | 1C2R | 1C2R |
| Your parent's first cousin | 1st cousin once removed | 1st cousin once removed |
| Your great-grandparent's first cousin | 1st cousin 3x removed | 1st cousin 3x removed |
Notice that the label is fully reciprocal in every row. "Twice removed" measures a gap between two people, not a rank, so there is no senior and junior version of the term.
Why the Cousin Number Stays at 1
The cousin number is fixed by the closer person's distance to the shared ancestor. Removals never touch it.
Two rules generate every cousin term in English:
- Cousin number = the number of generations from the closer person up to the shared ancestor, minus one
- Removals = the difference between the two people's generation counts
For your grandparent's first cousin, that person is 2 generations below the shared ancestors, so 2 minus 1 gives cousin degree 1. You are 4 generations below those same ancestors. The difference between 4 and 2 is 2, giving two removals. First cousin twice removed.
People who guess wrong at this relationship usually let the removals inflate the cousin number, arriving at "third cousin" because the person feels distant. The two numbers are independent. A first cousin five times removed is still a first cousin, because somebody in the pair is only two generations from the shared grandparents. The identical independence shows up at every degree, including 2nd cousin 1x removed and the far-flung 5th cousin.
The Common Ancestor
The shared ancestors are the older person's grandparents, which are your 2x-great-grandparents.
Follow it through. Your grandparent and their first cousin share a set of grandparents. Count those people from your position: they are your grandparent's grandparents, which makes them your great-great-grandparents, usually written 2x-great-grandparents. One couple at the top, two generations down to one side of the pair, four generations down to the other.
This is a much shallower connection than it feels like. Your 2x-great-grandparents were likely born in the mid-to-late 1800s for most people alive today. Census records, church registers, immigration manifests, and obituaries all reach that far comfortably. A 1st cousin 2x removed is a relative you can almost always document if you decide to.
The free relationship calculator at cousinchart.com will confirm any of this arithmetic if you would rather not count generations on your fingers.
Not a Great-Uncle, Not a Great-Aunt
Your grandparent's first cousin is not your great-uncle or great-aunt, even if everyone in the family calls them that.
A great-uncle, sometimes called a granduncle, is your grandparent's brother. A great-aunt is your grandparent's sister. Those are sibling relationships one generation up from your parents. Your grandparent's first cousin is a full step further out: not a sibling of your grandparent, but a child of your grandparent's aunt or uncle.
The mix-up is extremely common and mostly harmless in conversation. It becomes a problem in two places. In a family tree, it puts a person on the wrong branch entirely and can send you researching the wrong surname for months. And in DNA analysis, it wrecks your expectations: a real great-uncle shares about 12.5% of your DNA, while a first cousin twice removed shares about 3.125%. That is a fourfold difference, so mislabeling one as the other makes a perfectly normal match look wildly wrong.
If an older relative has always been "Uncle Ray," keep calling him Uncle Ray. Just write "first cousin twice removed" in the tree.
The DNA Numbers
First cousins twice removed share about 3.125% of their DNA on average, roughly 210 to 230 centimorgans. Real pairs run from about 40 cM to about 530 cM.
The theoretical expectation. Every step out halves the expected sharing. First cousins average 12.5%, first cousins once removed 6.25%, first cousins twice removed 3.125%. Against a genome of roughly 6,800 cM, that predicts about 213 cM.
The observed average. Community datasets built from confirmed pairs, most prominently the Shared cM Project, place the average near 229 cM.
The range is what matters. Reported totals for documented 1C2R pairs stretch from roughly 43 cM to roughly 530 cM. That thirteen-fold spread is caused by recombination, which divides DNA unevenly at every generation. Two siblings hand down different halves of what they carry, and after four generations of that shuffling, one pair of first cousins twice removed can share three times what another pair shares. Both are entirely normal.
| Relationship | Expected shared DNA | Typical reported range |
|---|---|---|
| 1st cousin once removed | ~6.25% | roughly 100–850 cM |
| 1st cousin 2x removed | ~3.125% | roughly 43–530 cM |
| 2nd cousin | ~3.125% | roughly 41–590 cM |
| 1st cousin 3x removed | ~1.56% | roughly 20–360 cM |
Every number in that table is an average that varies by pair. None of them is a threshold, and none should be used to rule a relationship in or out on its own.
Detection is not an issue at this distance. A genuine first cousin twice removed will show up as a match on any major consumer test. Sharing zero DNA at 3% expected relatedness is vanishingly unlikely, so a documented 1C2R who does not appear on your match list points to an error in the documentation.
The Second Cousin Problem
A 1st cousin 2x removed and a second cousin have the same expected shared DNA. No test can tell them apart from the total alone.
Look at rows two and three of the table above. Both average about 3.125%, and their observed ranges sit almost exactly on top of each other. Add a third candidate with the same expectation, the half first cousin once removed, and you have three genuinely different relationships producing one indistinguishable number.
So when a testing company estimates "2nd cousin," it is reporting a centimorgan band, not identifying a relationship. Here is how to actually narrow it down:
Generation patterns across the whole cluster. Individual ages prove nothing, but if a match and everyone who shares DNA with both of you consistently line up two generations off from your own family's births, the twice-removed reading is likely.
Shared matches. Check who else you both match. A 1C2R connects through your 2x-great-grandparents; a second cousin connects through your great-grandparents. Those are different ancestral couples, and your known relatives on each line will cluster differently.
Which of you is at which depth. In a 1C2R pair, one person is only two generations from the shared ancestors. That person often has living memory, photographs, or firsthand knowledge of the couple in question. A second cousin pair has nobody that close.
Documented trees. As always, the paper record is what resolves it. The DNA tells you the connection exists and roughly how far back it is. It does not name the path.
If the person turns out to be your parent's first cousin rather than your grandparent's, the label is once removed rather than twice, and the reasoning behind that is laid out in what is your mother's cousin to you.
What Their Children Are to You
Descendants follow automatically once you have anchored one person correctly.
| Person | Relationship to you |
|---|---|
| Your grandparent's first cousin | 1st cousin twice removed |
| Their child | 2nd cousin once removed |
| Their grandchild | 3rd cousin |
| Their great-grandchild | 3rd cousin once removed |
The second row catches people out. Your grandparent's first cousin's child is your second cousin once removed, not your first cousin three times removed. The reason is that the child moved one generation closer to your level, which shrinks the removal count and pushes the cousin number up by one. Every generation down does the same thing until the two lines are level, at which point you get a plain third cousin.
Half, Step, and In-Law Variations
A half first cousin twice removed shares one ancestor instead of an ancestral couple, and averages about half the DNA.
This arises when the couple at the top of the tree is not a couple. If your 2x-great-grandfather had children with two different women, the descendants of those two lines are half relatives to each other. Expected sharing drops from about 3.125% to about 1.56%, which then overlaps with a completely different set of relationships.
Step and in-law versions carry no shared DNA at all. Your first cousin twice removed's spouse is a genuine social relative and a genetic stranger. They will never appear on your match list through that connection.
What to Call Them Out Loud
Call them "cousin," or use their name. "First cousin twice removed" is a genealogical term, not a conversational one.
The precise label earns its keep in four places: building a family tree, interpreting DNA, filling out a medical family history, and settling estates. Everywhere else, families simplify, and there is no reason to fight that. Courtesy titles like "Aunt" and "Uncle" attach to this relationship constantly, especially when the person is two generations older.
Some varieties of English are more precise about cousins than American English is. In South Asian English, "cousin brother" and "cousin sister" specify a cousin's gender and often signal closeness, a usage explained in cousin bro. And when you start seeing the relationship compressed to 1C2R in software and match lists, the notation system is decoded in abbreviation for cousin.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does 1st cousin 2x removed mean?
It means first cousin twice removed. The person is either your grandparent's first cousin or your first cousin's grandchild, and "2x removed" records that you are two generations apart on the family tree.
How much DNA do first cousins twice removed share?
About 3.125% on average, roughly 210 to 230 centimorgans. Documented pairs range from about 40 cM to about 530 cM, so the average is a center point rather than a prediction for any particular pair.
Is my grandparent's first cousin my great-uncle?
No. A great-uncle is your grandparent's brother. Your grandparent's first cousin is your first cousin twice removed, a more distant relationship that shares roughly a quarter as much DNA, even though families often use the courtesy title anyway.
Can a DNA test tell a 1C2R apart from a second cousin?
Not from the shared total. Both average about 3.125% and their ranges overlap almost completely, as does the half first cousin once removed. Shared matches, generation patterns, and documented trees are what separate them.
Is my parent's first cousin once removed the same as my first cousin twice removed?
Yes. It is the same relationship described from a different starting point. Each generation you move down from your parent adds one removal, so your parent's 1C1R is your 1C2R.
What is my first cousin twice removed's child to me?
If the person is your grandparent's first cousin, their child is your second cousin once removed. If the person is your first cousin's grandchild, their child is your first cousin three times removed. Which direction the removal runs decides the answer.