In which countries in the world are you most likely
In which countries in the world are you most likely to end up marrying your cousin?
Finding the partner of your life can be a tedious and frustrating process. Why not simplify it? There is your cousin, tall, handsome, elegant and with a good job. You share a family, you have known each other for years, and you have common interests. What could go wrong? Tic: the social spring that penalizes marriage between cousins is activated. Cousins don’t marry each other, nobody wants to end up like Carlos II. And yet, 10% of the world’s marriages are between cousins.
This leads to an unavoidable question: in which countries in the world are you most likely to end up marrying your cousin? Despite the extravagance of it, a review of the state of marriage between cousins throughout the five continents reveals that the practice is more common than it seems and that not all places have the same social impediments to doing it ( voluntarily or involuntarily).
Starting with an unusual suspect.
Iceland: Be careful who you flirt with on Tinder
Let’s take Iceland as an example. The small Nordic country lives isolated from the rest of the continent with just a handful of inhabitants (300,000, the entire city of Alicante). Its language is arcane and remote, totally unrelated to the subsequent evolution of the Germanic languages, and its particular culture, despite the very egalitarian and advanced nature of its social and cultural institutions. In Iceland, as in the rest of Europe, marrying cousins is rare. So Icelanders are careful when flirting.
Will it be your cousin?
The Wall Street Journal tells it in this report: when flirting on Tinder, it is common for an Icelander to meet his cousin or cousin. It just so happens that Icelanders have a particular system of surnames, unable to predict at first glance if that handsome robust man shares a great aunt with you. So confusion and running into matches that you may later find yourself in the family clan meeting is something possible. Solution? Always have the Icelandic genealogical book on hand.
The fact that? Íslendingabók, a book ( now also an app ) containing family information on more than 700,000 Icelanders, living and dead. The invention has turned out to be crucial for a country as inbred and small as Iceland, an extravagance in the eyes of the rest of Europeans (Luxembourg or Liechtenstein may be small, but they are also in the center of the continent, which allows removals, transfers and meeting people ).
All cousins. (Brynjar Gunnarsson/AP Photo)
In Íslendingabók an Icelander can double-check whether the person they are flirting with is their cousin or not, thus avoiding ending up in bed with a fourth-degree relative. Ultimately, for Iceland it is a problem of scale: since all Icelanders are related in one way or another, coming from an original family that arrived on the gigantic islet centuries ago, it is very easy to sleep with a distant cousin. There are accounts of paired Icelanders meeting very common relatives as far back as the 18th century.
The phenomenon is not rare at all.
From when marrying cousins was illegal and not anymore
“Okay, but this is Iceland, there’s no way another European would end up married to his cousin, right?” It’s not that easy.
Take Italy, for example, where the stark economic and cultural differences between north and south also manifest in the frequency with which Italians marry close relatives. We discovered it yesterday thanks to this Amazing Maps tweet, which quickly caused a sensation on Twitter as a way of explaining the atavistic and irreconcilable disagreements between the Mezzogiorno and Alta Italia ( which leave the economic inequalities between Andalusia and the Basque Country as child’s play ).
The map is overwhelming, especially in Sicily, where in the mid-sixties still 40% of marriages were between cousins. It is an island, but it is not as small as Iceland: today, there are more than 5,000,000 Sicilians in Sicily alone (not counting the extensive immigration that has spread throughout the world, especially in the United States ). It is likely that, since then, the percentage has gone down.
In general, Europeans do not marry their cousins. In Spain or Italy, despite the Sicilian rarity, marriages between relatives at 5% of the population, figures similar to those of Belgium. In France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands they oscillate between 1% and 3% of the registered links. These are figures, if we think about it, quite high. Despite the fact that marriage between cousins has very negative social connotations, it is not a historical rarity: in isolated and poorly communicated communities, they offered a more than the obvious way out.
In blue, you can marry your cousin. Not in red. Most of the world accepts such marriages, with the notable exceptions of China, Korea, and the Philippines (and half the United States).
Also among the nobility, where the cliché points to the Habsburgs, an inbred family where there are any. In the 19th century, Charles Darwin, who was married to his cousin, estimated that about 3.5% of common Britons had married a close relative and that more than 4% of nobles had done the same. Historically, the Church had prohibited it, but given the pressing need to secure political ties ( Louis XIV married his Spanish cousin ), he used papal bulls as a way to generate profit.
Today, almost all European countries allow marriage between first cousins, even if it is rare. In the United States, most of the states (including some southern ones, despite the recurring jokes about its inbreeding ) prohibit it, given the strong rejection generated in the 19th century. All in all, around 250,000 have married their cousins, according to FiveThirtyEight, a number that may be much higher given the associated social stigma, and many couples’ need to keep it private.
If you want to marry your cousin, become a Muslim
So marrying a cousin while being a Christian and a European is, to say the least, a task that will entail numerous family objections. In case the couple wants to be free of sin, they should convert to Islam.
Most of the Arab world allows, accepts, and encourages marriage between cousins. The figures are staggering: almost 50% of marriages in Pakistan take place between first cousins or distant cousins, as well as in Sudan, Jordan, Yemen or Afghanistan. From Morocco to Bangladesh, passing through Burkina Faso, Mauritania, or Egypt, Muslims are more than used to marrying each other. They are responsible for that 10% of total world marriages between cousins.
In dark blue, the countries where you are likely to end up marrying your cousin.
This can cause problems from a genetic point of view (fetuses conceived between cousins, due to their high consanguinity, tend to have more birth defects than others), for which reason tests have been started in Qatar or Iraq to ensure viability and healthy marriage fertility. But why is it so widespread if it can be problematic? Here there is speculation about the tribal tradition of Arab countries and the need and desire to maintain ties with families within the same economic and social status.
Be that as it may, there is a wide debate as to whether this is a good idea or not. In the UK, families of Pakistani immigrants have caused the usual alarm in the tabloid media about incest. However, there are those who dispute our Western taboo, such as William Saletan in Slate, for whom the genetic risks are not high enough to uphold a literal American-style ban. Here and here similar cases are defended. Maybe Iceland doesn’t have such a big problem.