Ancestors vs Relatives

Question

I just saw a Profile of a long-time and very active WikiTree user who listed famous cousins as Ancestors.  Ancestors are people from whom you are descended—parents and grandparents.  Cousin, aunts, and uncles are relatives, but they are not ancestors--you do share a blood relationship with them but you are not descended from them.  People who marry your cousins, aunts, and uncles are not relatives—you share no blood relationship with them.  They are just connections by marriage.  Am I correct?  Are these the definitions WikiTree uses?

Comments

You are correct.

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I’ve never heard a rule that people who marry your blood relatives are not called relatives. I have aunts by blood and by marriage, and I call both kinds my relatives.

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No, there is no rule.  I also call my aunts and uncles by marriage “Aunt Helen” and “Uncle Knox” and think of them as relatives in a general, social context.  But in the genealogy context I remember that they are not blood relatives.  The main point of my question has to do with ancestors.  On a genealogy site—especially WikiTree—I was surprised to see that it is apparently acceptable to call a 6^th cousin 4 times removed an ancestor. 

Answer 1

WikiTree has no official definition of "ancestor", so the term is used on WikiTree however the multitude of individual WT members use it, which may vary by the context.

In the English-speaking world, the term is most commonly used with the narrow meaning of a person from whom you are descended. However, it is not uncommon (and therefore not wrong) for it to be sometimes used with a broader meaning to include other long-ago relatives, such as great aunts and uncles. For example, if someone is asked if they have any famous ancestors, they might respond by mentioning a famous great uncle. Some sources specifically condone such a broader meaning. For example, here's the definition from MyHeritage (bolding added):

Ancestors

Your ancestors are the people who came before you in your family. The term usually refers to relatives more distant than grandparents, such as your great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and so on. Ancestors may also include people from whom you are not directly descended, such as great-aunts and uncles.

And the Cambridge Dictionary defines "Ancestor" as:

a person related to you who lived a long time ago.

Which could include, say, great uncles and aunts.

The possibility that some people might interpret "ancestors" to include people other than people from whom you are descended is no doubt the reason that lots of people use the term "direct ancestors" when they want to be clear that they only mean people from whom they are descended.