Blood Relations questions with answers and concepts
Learn blood relations with concept notes and worked examples, then practise focused questions with explained answers. Build accuracy for placement and competitive aptitude tests before trying timed mode.
Blood-relations questions ask you to trace family connections from precise statements. The fastest reliable method is to draw a small family graph, place generations in order, label gender and marriage links, and then follow the requested path. Do not rely on names or intuition: a child may be a son or daughter, a spouse link is not a blood link, and an incomplete set of facts can legitimately lead to ‘cannot be determined’.
Key formulas and rules
7 rulesGeneration Level Indexing: , , , ,
Kinship Composition Rules: ;
Collateral Lineage: ;
Cousin Relationship:
Affinal (In-Law) Relationships: ;
Coded Relation Graph Traversal: In expressions like , parse according to operator mapping table and construct directed family tree
Gender Unambiguity Rule: A relationship between and cannot be assigned without determining both generation gap and biological gender of the target
Key concepts
Draw a family graph
Represent a parent-child link vertically and a spouse link horizontally. Put people from an older generation above their children and siblings on the same level. Add a gender label only when the statement gives one. The graph makes long phrases visible and reduces the chance of reversing a link.
Parse nested phrases from the inside out
For a phrase such as ‘the daughter of the wife of my grandfather's son’, resolve the innermost reference first, then move outward one link at a time. Replace each resolved phrase with a short label such as father, mother or aunt before continuing. Never skip a link in a chain.
Track generations separately
A parent is one generation above a child, a grandparent is two above, and a sibling is in the same generation. An aunt or uncle is usually the sibling of a parent, while a cousin is the child of that sibling. Counting levels helps distinguish nephew from cousin and granddaughter from daughter.
Use gender clues exactly
Brother and son identify a male person; sister and daughter identify a female person. Parent, child, spouse and sibling do not by themselves reveal gender. Do not infer an unmentioned sibling or assume the speaker's gender unless the wording requires it.
Separate blood and marriage links
A spouse creates an affinal connection, not a parent or sibling connection. A brother's wife is a sister-in-law, a wife's parent is a parent-in-law, and a sibling's child is a niece or nephew. Mark marriage links clearly so an in-law is not accidentally treated as a blood relative.
Interpret only son and only daughter carefully
‘My father's only son’ refers to the speaker if the speaker is that son, but it can refer to the speaker's brother when the speaker is female. ‘The only daughter of my mother’ similarly depends on who is speaking. Resolve the gender and identity clues first; do not assume that the speaker is the only child unless the statement says so.
Translate coded relations one operator at a time
Questions may define symbols such as plus, minus, multiplication or slash as family links. Write the meaning above each operator, then follow the chain from left to right unless the question supplies another grouping. There is no universal meaning for a symbol, and the same symbol can mean something different in another question.
Use shared parents and siblings correctly
If A and B are siblings and C is A's parent, exam questions normally treat C as B's parent as well. If a statement says only that two people share a mother, do not add an unmentioned father or marriage. Apply the exact family convention supported by the clues and avoid inventing extra relationships.
Recognise underdetermined relations
Sometimes the clues identify a common parent but do not establish whether another person's other parent is the target. In that case, construct two valid family graphs with different answers. If both satisfy every clue, the correct response is cannot be determined, even when one answer feels more familiar.
Answer from the requested viewpoint
After tracing the graph, reverse the direction if the question asks how the second person is related to the first. If A is B's uncle, B is A's nephew or niece depending on B's gender. Many errors come from finding the correct link but reporting it from the wrong person's perspective.
Verify the complete chain
Check every stated link, gender clue, marriage condition and generation before selecting an option. For a photograph or introduction question, identify who ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘her’ and ‘his’ refer to at each step. A final answer is reliable only if the whole graph, not just the last link, remains consistent.
Worked examples
Example 1
Pointing to a photograph, a man says, ‘She is the daughter of my father's only son.’ How is the man related to the girl?
Solution
Step 1: The speaker is a man and ‘my father's only son’ refers to the speaker himself.
Step 2: The girl is the daughter of the speaker.
Answer: The man is the girl's father.
Example 2
A woman introduces a man as the son of the brother of her mother. How is the man related to the woman?
Solution
Step 1: The brother of the woman's mother is her maternal uncle.
Step 2: The man's parent is that maternal uncle.
Step 3: The son of a maternal uncle is the woman's cousin.
Answer: Cousin.
Example 3
A is the brother of B, B is the sister of C, and C is the father of D. How is A related to D?
Solution
Step 1: A, B and C are siblings because A is B's brother and B is C's sister.
Step 2: C is D's father.
Step 3: A is the brother of D's father, so A is D's uncle.
Answer: Uncle.
Example 4
A woman points to a man and says, ‘He is the only son of my mother's father.’ How is the woman related to the man?
Solution
Step 1: The woman's mother's father is her maternal grandfather.
Step 2: His only son is the woman's maternal uncle.
Step 3: The woman is the daughter of the uncle's sibling, so she is his niece.
Answer: Niece.
Example 5
A is the son of B. C is the father of D. B is the daughter of C. How is A related to D?
Solution
Step 1: B is C's daughter, and A is B's son.
Step 2: D is also C's child because C is D's father.
Step 3: B and D are siblings, so A is D's nephew.
Answer: Nephew.
Example 6
If A plus B means A is the father of B, A minus B means A is the brother of B, and A times B means A is the sister of B, what does A minus B times C mean?
Solution
Step 1: A minus B means A is the brother of B.
Step 2: B times C means B is the sister of C.
Step 3: A is the brother of B, and B is the sister of C, so A is the brother of C.
Answer: A is C's brother.
Example 7
If M star P means M is the brother of P and P dollar N means P is the father of N, which expression shows that M is the uncle of N?
Solution
Step 1: M must be the brother of N's parent to be N's uncle.
Step 2: M star P makes M the brother of P.
Step 3: P dollar N makes P the father of N.
Answer: M star P dollar N. The symbols are placeholders here; in a real question, always use the definitions supplied with that question.
Example 8
M is the father of N, N is the son of O, and O is the mother of P. What is P's relation to M?
Solution
Step 1: M and O are both parents of N.
Step 2: O is also P's mother, but the clues do not say that M is P's father.
Step 3: P could be M's child or could be O's child from another relationship, and both possibilities fit the stated facts.
Answer: Cannot be determined.
Example 9
A is B's sister. C is B's mother. D is C's father. E is D's mother. How is A related to E?
Solution
Step 1: A is also C's child because A and B are siblings.
Step 2: D is C's father, so D is A's grandfather.
Step 3: E is D's mother, so E is A's great-grandmother.
Step 4: Therefore A is E's great-granddaughter.
Answer: Great-granddaughter.
Example 10
A woman says, ‘This man's wife's mother is the only daughter of my mother.’ How is the woman related to the man?
Solution
Step 1: The only daughter of the woman's mother is the woman herself, because the speaker is female.
Step 2: The man's wife's mother is therefore the speaker.
Step 3: The speaker is the mother of the man's wife.
Answer: Mother-in-law.
Representative solved questions
See the kind of question in this topic before opening the full practice set.
Question 1
Pointing to a lady, Rajesh said, 'She is the daughter of the woman who is the mother of the husband of my mother.' How is the lady related to Rajesh?
Answer: D. Aunt
ExplanationStep 1: 'Husband of my mother' is Rajesh's father.
Step 2: 'Mother of the husband of my mother' is Rajesh's grandmother.
Step 3: 'Daughter of the woman who is the mother of my father' is Rajesh's father's sister, i.e., aunt.
Answer: Aunt
Sources and review notes
This is an AISEA-authored practice question.
Review status: accepted · Reviewed 2026-08-13 · structure and answer-key checks, editorial quality checks, duplicate screening
Question 2
Introducing a girl, a boy said, 'She is the daughter of the wife of the only son of my grandfather.' How is the girl related to the boy?
Answer: A. Sister
ExplanationStep 1: 'My grandfather' - the boy's grandfather.
Step 2: 'Only son of my grandfather' is the boy's father.
Step 3: 'Wife of the only son of my grandfather' is the boy's mother.
Step 4: 'Daughter of my mother' is the boy's sister.
Answer: Sister
Sources and review notes
This is an AISEA-authored practice question.
Review status: accepted · Reviewed 2026-08-13 · structure and answer-key checks, editorial quality checks, duplicate screening
Question 3
A man said to a woman, 'Your mother's husband's sister is my aunt.' How is the man related to the woman?
Answer: C. Cousin
ExplanationStep 1: 'Your mother's husband' is the woman's father.
Step 2: 'Your mother's husband's sister' is the woman's paternal aunt.
Step 3: If the woman's paternal aunt is also the man's aunt, then the man and woman share the same aunt.
Step 4: This means they are cousins (children of siblings).
Answer: Cousin
Sources and review notes
This is an AISEA-authored practice question.
Review status: accepted · Reviewed 2026-08-13 · structure and answer-key checks, editorial quality checks, duplicate screening
Common mistakes and useful habits
- Draw the family graph instead of holding a nested sentence in memory.
- Resolve ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘his’ and ‘her’ from the speaker's viewpoint at every step.
- Mark parent, sibling and spouse links differently and keep generations aligned.
- Use brother, sister, son and daughter as gender clues; do not infer gender from parent or child.
- Parse ‘only son’ and ‘only daughter’ after identifying the speaker's gender and family position.
- Decode relation symbols exactly as defined and follow each operator one link at a time.
- For cannot-be-determined questions, construct two valid graphs with different final relations.
- Reverse the relation when the question asks how the second person relates to the first.
- Recheck every clue, including marriage and generation conditions, before choosing an answer.
Sources and review notes
Reviewed by AISEA Editorial Desk on 2 Sep 2026.
- The page was written against the Blood Relations question bank and covers nested statements, photographs, generations, spouses, in-laws, coded operators and indeterminate relations.
- Worked examples were independently traced through family graphs and checked for speaker perspective, gender clues, generation distance and missing-parent ambiguity.
- The page avoids treating marriage as a blood link and explicitly teaches when multiple valid family graphs make a relation undetermined.
- PedigreeNational Human Genome Research Institute · Checked 2 Sep 2026Supports: family relationship diagrams and reading connections across generations
- Defining Family and HouseholdOpenStax · Checked 2 Sep 2026Supports: kinship charts, generation levels and parent, sibling and marriage links
- What does it mean if a disorder seems to run in my family?MedlinePlus Genetics · Checked 2 Sep 2026Supports: recording family history as a family tree and tracing biological relationships
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