You probably missed the original name drop, or they forgot they haven't dropped it. If you find yourself in that situation, it is not impolite to ask for clarif

You probably missed the original name drop, or they forgot they haven't dropped it. If you find yourself in that situation, it is not impolite to ask for clarification as to "who is X in all this"? The customary response is to furnish the information that someone is related to you in Y way. The polite thing is then to let them go on with the exchange. It is not polite to try to drill out the entire family tree. (Unless there has been such a multitude of name drops, in which case it is okay to ask for clarification for each in turn, and an optional "who are they to each other may be warranted just to keep the relationships straight). In the U.S. this had been totally normal. As it is generally considered that one one is speaking to is the holder of a shared of a shared context. Back in the day, there wasn't a massive infrastructure or mass reproducible mechanism for background verification, and it was up to you to determine and measure whether or not someone else was eorth sharing such details with. It was also polite to decline to furnish such information as irrelevant. I've noticed with social media, people get in the habit of assuming everyone already does. Thus killing one of the opportunities for enjoyable small talk. The ritual of the unrolling of family connections. This was aldo a form of shibboleth before facebook and the like, as anyone who knew you through a relative would generally get a higher degree of trust. This is completely bunk now, or at least far less useful than it once was in the presence of Docial media and OSIntel.