u/Desperate-Math609

Warning: This going to be long but I want to explain the situation clearly.

I’ve been building my family tree for years and I’ve gotten pretty good at researching ancestors and their records. Because of that I joined several genealogy platforms, one of them being MyHeritage — that I hadn’t logged in for a long time.

Recently I came back and tried the Cousin Finder feature for the first time. Most matches were people I already knew had trees on the platform — my sister, a cousin on my mom’s side, etc. No surprises there.
But the second closest match after my sister was a name I had never heard in my life.

According to the tool, this person is a first cousin on my mother’s side, and we supposedly share the same grandfather.
Here’s why that’s strange: my grandfather only had two children — my mother and her half-brother. And my uncle only has one son. So there shouldn’t be any unknown first cousins.

My grandfather has a very distinctive name, so it's unlikely that his grandfather had the same name as mine by coincidence

So I decided to look at their tree, and it made things even more confusing. The line going up from his grandfather — his parents, grandparents, etc. — matched mine exactly: same birthplaces, same dates, same great-grandparents.

But the line going down toward him was incredibly vague. His grandmother (who would be different from mine, since we’d only share the grandfather) had just a first name, no surname, and only birth and death years. His mother — who, if this match is real, would be my mother’s half-sister — same thing: just a name, no last name, only years. And his father’s side has inconsistencies too: his father has a surname that doesn’t match his paternal grandfather’s surname, and his paternal grandmother only has a name, no surname at all, no birth, place of birth or death. Nothing.

His father’s profile is set to private, but even so his surname is visible — and it’s different from my supposed cousin’s surname.

I sent him a message through MyHeritage months ago. No reply — either they never saw it or chose not to answer.

I genuinely don’t know what to make of this. Is this likely a real match or could Cousin Finder produce a false positive this close? Has anyone dealt with something similar?

This may be a bit long, but I want to clearly explain this situation.

So I recently became active again on MyHeritage, which I hadn’t logged into for a long time. I discovered the Cousin Finder feature, which didn’t exist the last time I logged in. I tried it for the first time.

Most matches were people I already knew had trees on the platform — my sister, a cousin on my mom’s side, etc. No surprises there.

But the second closest match after my sister was a man with a name I had never heard before. According to the tool, this man is supposedly my first cousin on my mother’s side, and we share the same grandfather.

That was strange because my grandfather only had two children: my mother and her half-brother. My uncle only has one son. So there shouldn't be any unknown first cousins.

At first, I thought it was just a mistake on the platform. Maybe this person’s grandfather had the same name as mine, and we matched because of that. I'm sure that's happened before. However, the problem is that my grandfather has a very distinctive name, so a match with his name shouldn't be that easy.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look at his family tree to make sure, but it only made things more confusing. The line going up from his grandfather—his parents, grandparents, etc.—matched mine exactly, with the same birthplaces, dates, and great-grandparents. So his tree basically showed that we had the same grandfather.

But the line going down toward this person was incredibly vague. His grandmother (who would be different from mine, since we’d only share the same grandfather) had just a first name with no surname, and only birth and death years. Nothing else.
Their mother — who, if this match is real, would be my mother’s half-sister — same thing: just a name, no surname, only years of birth and death.
And his father’s side has inconsistencies too: his father has a surname that doesn’t match his paternal grandfather’s surname, and his paternal grandmother only has a name, no last name. His father’s profile is set to private, but even so his surname is visible — and it’s different from my supposed cousin’s last name.

I didn't know what else to do but write him a message on MyHeritage Messenger.
He never reply — either they never saw it or chose not to answer.
So now I have questions and I genuinely don’t know what to make of this.
Is this likely a real match or could Cousin Finder produce a false positive this close?

I would greatly appreciate some advice on how I should proceed this.