Naming conventions

chughes · 06-08-2010 8:53am #1

I know that my father's parents would be my paternal grandfather and paternal grandmother and my mother's parents would be my maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother.

Is there a similar naming convention for individually identifying the 8 great grand parents and the 16 great great grand parents ?

Thanks in advance.

pinkypinky · 06-08-2010 9:20am

It's not a naming convention, per se, to refer to your maternal and paternal grandparents. You can use the same term to refer to each side of your great/gg grandparents. Most people never know these antecedents so there's reason to distinguish more than saying "one of my paternal great-grandmothers" or something like that.

Some countries do use different words for each grandparent so "maternal grandmother" is implicit in the word...it's a bit like the way some families might use "grannie" on one side and "nana" on the other.

chughes · 06-08-2010 11:43am

Thanks Pinky. I'm working on my family history and a few people I know are also doing their's. When we discuss each others findings about our ancestors, I thought there might be a simple way to describe say, my father's mother's mother, for example.

Naming conventions

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