Genealogical Numbering Systems
A multitude of Genealogical Numbering Systems have been developed for indexing family trees and pedigree charts in text format. Each system provides a consistent method to determine the appropriate & predictable identifier for persons in a Family Tree.
Most systems assign identifiers relative to a focal person and are oriented towards Ancestors (an ascending system) or Descendants (a descending system).
The terminology used to refer to this focal person varies, including: subject, proband (from psychiatry & medical genetics; proposito for male proband or proposita for female proband), root node (graphing), progenitor/primogenitor (for descending genealogical numbering systems), de cujus (Latin term meaning 'about which').
Contents
Genealogical Numbering System Support
Reports | Descendant Systems | Ancestor Systems | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Simple numbering |
d'Aboville | de Villiers | Henry | Modified Henry |
Meurgey de Tupigny |
Pama | Modified Register |
Ahnentafel | Sosa-Stradonitz | |
Graphs:Hourglass Graph | ✔ | |||||||||
Graphical Reports:Descendants Lines | ✔ | |||||||||
Text Reports:Ahnentafel Report | ✔ | |||||||||
Text Reports:Detailed Ancestral Report | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||
Text Reports:Descendant Report | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||
Text Reports:Detailed Descendant Report | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
Web Pages:Descendant Indented Tree | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
Simple numbering
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Descendant Report...
Ahnentafel
An ascending system for numbering pedigree ancestors starting with '1' at a focal person. The number of the father is double that of the child. The mother is double the child's number plus one.
Origin
An Austrian nobleman, diplomat, historian, and publicist named Michaël Eytzinger (circa 1530-1598) introduced a new functional theory of numeration of ancestors in 1590 with the Cologne publication of the Thesaurus principum hac aetate in Europa viventium ("lexicon of officials in this age in Europe living"). The Ahnentafel (German for "ancestor table") was first illustrated with a 5 generation pedigree of Henry III of France on pages 146 and 147.
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Graphs -> Hourglass Graph...
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Detailed Ancestral Report...
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Ahnentafel Report... • Specification (2007)
External Links
- Ahnentafel Wikipedia
- Genealogical Numbering Systems:Ahnentafel Wikipedia
d'Aboville
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Detailed Descendant Report...
- DescendantsLines • 3rd Party add-on
External Links
de Villiers
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Descendant Report...
Henry
The Henry System is a descending system created by Reginald Buchanan Henry (1881-1969) created a numbering system assigning a number for his 1935 book, Genealogies of the Families of the Presidents. In the Henry System, each President was a Progenitor and restated the list with and index number equal to their birth order. The progenitor's offspring is Generation 2 and appends a birth order digit to the index in the 2nd place. If there are more than 9 children, the tenth child is given the letter 'X' and the eleventh starts alphabetical letters A through V. So a 4 digit index of 64X3 would be a child of the fourth generation. That descendant would be described as the 3rd child of the 10th child of the 4th child of the progenitor. And the progenitor was 6th born in their family.
The original book also used an outline form which successively indented for each generation. Although simple to comprehend, the Henry format is not accepted for most genealogical publications.
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Detailed Descendant Report...
- Modified Henry Systems
The Modified Henry system substitutes a parenthetical number if more than 9 offspring were in a generation. So the 64X3 Henry system example from the section above would be 64(10)3 in the Modified Henry system.
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Detailed Descendant Report...
External Links
Meurgey de Tupigny
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Descendant Report...
Pama
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Descendant Report...
Register
Numbering system created in 1870 for use in the New England Historic and Genealogical Register published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Detailed Descendant Report...
External Links
- Register-style numbering
- Record System (Modified Register System)
- NGSQ System (Modified Register System) National Genealogical Society Quarterly
Sosa-Stradonitz
Origin
Spanish Genealogist Jerónimo de Sosa was a 17th-century Spanish Franciscan friar and a genealogist who based a genealogical numbering system of ancestors on the Ahnentafel numbering system first published by Michaël Eytzinger. Sosa's 1676 work Noticia de la gran casa de los marqueses de Villafranca established a standard.
The system was popularized on a large scale by Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz (1863–1933) when he published his interpretation of Eytzinger's and Sosa's method in his Ahnentafel-Atlas: Ahnentafeln zu 32 Ahnen der Regenten Europas und ihrer Gemahlinnen, 1898–1904, containing 79 charts of the sovereigns of Europe and their wives. (In 1895, Kekulé's prominent organic chemist father was ennobled by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, giving him the right to add "von Stradonitz" to his name, referring to a possession of his patrilineal ancestors in Stradonice, Bohemia.)
Gramps features using this system
- Reports ->Text Reports -> Detailed Ancestral Report...
External Links
- Sosa-Stradonitz on Wikipedia
Other numbering systems
- Ancestral Lines
- Axtell Genealogy--Numbering System
- Beruck numbering • Christophe Beruck
- Dollarhide System • William "Bill" W. Dollarhide (1942- )
- Forkheim's Numbering System
- GENMTD-L: Numbering System?
- Knot System Sequential
- Yet Another Genealogy Numbering System
Hybrid Approaches
- Institute for Genealogical Studies approach • FamilySearch
Comparative References
Articles comparing & contrasting merits of competing numbering sysytems
- Numbering Systems In Genealogy • Richard "Dick" Allen Pence 1932-2009
- Genealogical numbering systems • Wikipedia
Development Resources
- Add a 'numbering' data class - Gramps feature request 0004169
- PseudonymTree.gramps - example (gzip compressed) multi-generational Gramps format Tree that uses intuitive pseudonyms & IDs for testing & exploration use.