Talk:Cousin couple

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Contents 1 Question 2 Name 3 Response to the British Study 4 Requested move 4.1 Survey 4.2 Discussion

[edit] Question

ok I would like to know if me and my first cousin could have a relationship if his mother and my father are brother and sister does that make us blood, even if we dont share the same father please let me know. -- amber —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.70.77.91 (talk • contribs).

Yes, the two of you are blood relatives who share 1/8 of your genes. If you're planning to get married, then whether it's legal would depend on where you live. If you're planning to have children together, then there's a slightly higher risk of abnormalities; don't skimp on the prenatal care. If you're planning to have a sexual relationship without getting married and without having children, then none of this applies, and I guess you're asking whether it's a good idea. It probably isn't. 171.64.71.123 07:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Isn't the name of this article immature, childish, uncultured and unencyclopedic? Wouldn't a better title be something like Cousin unions, etc? But "Kissing cousins"?! That's pretty... lame? Charles 15:34, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, a name change might be in order, as I'm not sure that the term 'kissing cousins' is used much outside of North-America. I think this article was once titled "Cousin couples", which sounds reasonable to me. I'd like a few more people to toss in their opinion before making any change, though. Serpent-A

Off the top of my head, I can think of Cousin unions, Cousin relationships... Even still, this article is short... It could even be merged with another topic. Charles 01:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response to the British Study

The British study states that 55% of Pakistanis in Britain marry cousins. I'm not an expert on the subject, but wouldn't that mean that children who are the product of cousin marriages are marrying cousins themselves, which makes for a far greater chance of birth defects than a single pair of cousins having children? If two cousins marry, that means that their children have 3 sets of great-grandparents rather than 4. If those children of cousins also have children with cousins (should apply to 30% of them if 55% marry cousins) that means they could have 5 or less (even 3 is possible in the case of double cousins) sets of great-great grandparents instead of 8 from a series of non-cousin couples, which I think would greatly increase the probability of having birth defects. From what I understand, two cousins having children isn't that big of a deal, as is cited by the other study. However, multiple cousins in a family marrying is a problem. I'd make a note of it on the page, but I think that constitutes original content, rather than something sourced from somewhere else. Any thoughts on this, anyone? -GamblinMonkey 16:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Cousin couple → Kissing cousins – Regardless of what the OED may or may not say (the stated reason for the move), the term that is actually used should be the article title by WP:NC(CN). I, at least, have never heard the term "Cousin couple" used. Additionally, even if this article stays here, "Kissing cousins" should then redirect to it, because I highly doubt that there would be any room for an encylopedic article on friendship between cousins alone (any more than room for an article on "grandfathers who are also friends" or "plumbers who are also friends"). Don't get me wrong, I'm not playing down the dictionary definition as irrelevant; I'm just saying that there is in no way content for 2 articles here, and one unified article at the more commonly used term ("kissing cousins") can tackle the issue.

The Google test yields 186,000 Google hits for "kissing cousins," 84,800 for "kissing cousin," and a mere 6,050 for "cousin couple."

One other comment. If we do decide to move, we should decide whether to go to Kissing cousins or Kissing cousin. This is a 50/50 split, and whichever one isn't chosen should be a redirect to the other article. WP guidelines of Wikipedia:Naming_Conventions#Prefer_singular_nouns would suggest the singular, but the term usually is used as a pair. So it could go either way. SnowFire 04:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose Kissing cousins is juvenile and unencyclopaedic. Must we rename urine to piss and sexual intercourse to other things? God knows there are many, many Google hits for those words. Charles 13:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored, so yes, if the term in common use for something is considered juvenile by some, that still isn't a veto for having the article there. Anti-Semitism to mean anti-Judaism is flat-out incorrect linguistically (to me a worse crime than juvenileness), but it's the term in common use, so c'est la vie. Also, obviously, my claim does not rest solely upon Google, it's just the only claim that can easily be checked and confirmed over the Internet. The claim mostly rests on me having never read the phrase "cousin couple" before, and I've read history involving European royalty that has had plenty of opportunity to use it. It's possible I just read an odd selection or forgot, but that is the main reason I'm proposing the move. SnowFire 05:08, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose The terms kissing cousin and its plural, as defined by all major dictionaries, do not refer to cousins with a romantic relationship (see my comment below). Ruakh 17:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - for the reasons already stated on this page. Serpent-A 18:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - as per discussion. (And I always thought "kissing cousin" meant something different !) -- Beardo 12:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

The problem is, though, that the term "kissing cousins" gets more Google hits because it has a broader definition than simply denoting a romantic relationship between two cousins. It would seem to me, then, that if we're going to have an article about marriages/romantic relationships between cousins, we should use a title that is as specific as the content of the article. "Cousin couple" is at least unambiguous, whereas with "kissing cousins" we had all that pre-amble in the article about the different meanings of the term. Serpent-A 08:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed; the number of Google-hits is irrelevant: "United States of America" gets more Google-hits than "Organization of American States", but that doesn't mean Organization of American States should be moved. Ruakh 17:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

What major dictionaries have to say on the subject:

• The Oxford English Dictionary:

[...] kissing cousin, a relative or friend with whom one is on close enough terms to greet with a kiss; also transf. [...] (Under kissing, ppl. a., part b.) link

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

kissing cousin n.

1. A distant relative known well enough to be kissed when greeted.
2. One of two or more things that are closely akin.

link — related link

• The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

kissing cousin noun

1. a person and especially a relative whom one knows well enough to kiss more or less formally upon meeting
2. one that is closely related in kind to something else

link

Unless someone can find a reliable source that defines kissing cousin differently, the proposed move would constitute original research. (Even if such a source can be found, I think it's a bad idea, since it defies the definitions given by some of the most important English dictionaries; but at least then it wouldn't be original research.)

Ruakh 17:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• Sigh. I was intending to post earlier, and see that I'm already a bit late. Just to repeat, I am ____not___ saying that your definition is incorrect! I did the dictionary check, too. This has absolutely nothing to do with original research; I'm hardly an expert and simply stumbled across this at the right time. However, there isn't much content of use for kissing cousins. It is a related topic, however.

I agree that getting rid of the preamble describing different uses is a good thing to strive for, and I think that this can best be done with one article at Kissing cousins, the term that we can all agree is the one in most common use (for anything; not even talking about kissing cousins implying cousin couples). In the former article, the main content on cousin couples was under the "Cousin couple" subheading, which I think is reasonable; just make clear in the intro that Kissing cousins only implies friendship.

To put things abstractly. A cousin couple is a specific instance of kissing cousins, a broader topic. However, all the information is on the more specific topic, but the term in common use is the broader term. Why not have the broader article be the headliner, and then it can spend most of its time talking about the specific instance of note? That way, it can conform to where people would expect to be AND educate them about the correct term. SnowFire 05:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

To elaborate a bit. What should go at the kissing cousins article? Presume you win and this article stays at cousin couples. The current stub seems doomed to stay a stub and dicdef. Should it stay a stub? Is there potential for expansion? This is a serious question. If so, then perhaps leaving things as is isn't so bad. However, if kissing cousins is doomed to forever be a stub, then what? I can see a good argument for AfDing it at that point. At that point, we can leave people searching for cousin couples via kissing couples out in the cold via simply not having anything there, or we could have a redirect from Kissing cousins to cousin couples. But if we do that, then why not have had the whole thing at Kissing cousins, where we could discuss the simple kissing cousin dicdef, as well as the slightly more interesting issue of cousin couples and the laws/mores involved with that? SnowFire 05:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

But what makes you so convinced, SnowFire, that the term "Kissing cousins" is used popularly to describe cousin couples? Of the 186,000 Google hits that it gets, how many times is the term used to actually describe cousin couples? You'd have to click on every "hit" to determine what context the term is being used in. You say that you've never come across the term Cousin couple in your readings about European royalty, but I bet those books don't use the term kissing cousins, either. More likely, they would simply state something along the lines of "Prince X married his cousin, Princess Y" and leave it at that. Frankly, I would say that about 90% of the times that I've come across the term kissing cousins it has been used metaphorically rather than as some type of literal description of a marriage/romance between cousins.

Also, I'm not sure I agree that cousin couple is even a sub-topic of kissing cousins; they seem only barely connected.

As for what happens to Kissing cousins if this article stays here, delete it or redirect it, I guess, cause I don't see how a dicdef like that can really be expanded. Edit: It would appear that someone has already turned it into a redirect to this page... Serpent-A 11:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that the meaning is muddy and it is used for both purposes, myself. The point rests not so much on "kissing cousins implies cousin couples" (though it can, and even at 10% usage, that's still better than "cousin couple") but on "cousin couples is a rarely used phrase." If we are only going to have one article, kissing cousins is both broader and more used.

I think the meaning issue is important, but it's not the only thing; I'd say this would remain true even if everybody unambiguously understood the difference. I've seen occasional weird articles pop up about slang on a particular website (when that website doesn't even have an article yet) or specific characters from a TV series when the series article is currently threadbare. Those are correctly merged into the general topic, even if the result is a somewhat unbalanced article (say, an article on a TV series where 2/3 of it discussed that one character). It's the same thing here. SnowFire 18:56, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your claim that kissing cousins is a broader term: if two cousins are an actual couple, romantically involved and all that, then kissing cousins is a ridiculously weak term. It would be like a married man introducing his wife with "this is a friend of mine." Ruakh 21:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• The request failed. --Dijxtra 12:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)