Glossary · Watkins Genetic Studies

Family and relationships

Ancestor: Anyone you descend from: parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.
Descendant: Anyone who descends from a person: children, grandchildren and so on.
Direct line: The chain of parents from a person back through their ancestors, as opposed to aunts, uncles and cousins.
Collateral line: Relatives who share an ancestor with you but are not in your direct line, such as siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Paternal / maternal line: Ancestors reached through your father (paternal) or your mother (maternal).
Generation: One step between parent and child. Your parents are one generation back, your grandparents two.
Great-grandparent numbering: Your grandparent’s parent is a great-grandparent; one generation further is a 2nd great-grandparent, then 3rd, and so on.
Cousin, removed: First cousins share grandparents; second cousins share great-grandparents. "Removed" counts the difference in generations: your parent’s first cousin is your first cousin once removed.
Pedigree: A chart of a person’s direct ancestors, usually doubling each generation (2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents…).
Pedigree collapse: When the same ancestor appears more than once in a pedigree, usually because relatives married. It means you have fewer distinct ancestors than the doubling suggests.
Ahnentafel number: A numbering system for a pedigree: the starting person is 1, a person’s father is double their number and their mother double plus one.
Surname / maiden name: The family name. A maiden name is a woman’s surname before marriage; this site records people under their birth surname where known.

Records and sources

Source: Where a piece of information came from, such as a census, a birth certificate, a book or an online tree.
Citation: A pointer from a fact or person to the source that supports it, often with a page, film or URL.
Primary source: A record made at or near the time of an event by someone with first-hand knowledge, such as a marriage register.
Secondary source: Information recorded later or second-hand, such as a family history book or another person’s online tree.
Vital records: Official records of birth, marriage and death.
Census: A periodic count of a population. Many censuses list everyone in a household with ages, birthplaces and relationships.
Life event: Something that happened to a person or family on a date and at a place: birth, baptism, marriage, residence, occupation, death, burial.

Dates

ABT: "About". The date is approximate: ABT 1850.
BEF / AFT: "Before" / "after". The event happened before or after the given date.
BET … AND …: "Between". The event happened somewhere in the range given: BET 1850 AND 1855.
EST / CAL: "Estimated" / "calculated". The date was worked out from other information, such as an age on a census.

DNA and genetic genealogy

Autosomal DNA: DNA inherited from both parents and all lines of ancestry; used to find cousins across all lines.
Y-DNA: DNA passed from father to son largely unchanged; used to trace a direct paternal (surname) line.
mtDNA: Mitochondrial DNA, passed from a mother to all her children; used to trace a direct maternal line.
Centimorgan (cM): A unit for the length of shared DNA segments. More shared centimorgans generally means a closer relationship.
Haplogroup: A branch of the human family tree defined by Y-DNA or mtDNA markers, often associated with deep ancestral origins.

On this site

Tree: A collection of people, families, events and sources that belongs to one owner. Each tree is its own workspace.
Master tree: The site-wide combined Watkins tree that individual trees can be matched into.
Home person: The person a tree starts from when you open it, usually the tree owner or the main subject.
Family: On this site, a couple and/or their children. A person can belong to one family as a child and several as a partner.
Living person: Anyone with no death record who was born within the last 110 years, or whose birth year is unknown. Their details are only shown to members of the tree.
Visibility: Who can see a tree: Private (members only), Anyone with the link (a secret share link), or Public (listed on the site). Living people stay hidden in every case.
Owner / Editor / Viewer: Member roles in a tree. Owners manage the tree and its members, editors can change its contents, viewers can only look.
GEDCOM: The standard file format for exchanging family trees between programs and websites (.ged). Most genealogy sites can export one.
Import: Bringing a tree in from elsewhere: a GEDCOM file or link, or a connected site such as WikiTree. Re-importing updates people instead of duplicating them.
Connector: A built-in link to another genealogy site (for example WikiTree) that imports a person and their relatives by ID.
FamilySearch ID / WikiTree ID: The identifier a person has on that site (such as KWQS-BBQ or Watkins-123). Kept with imported people so they can be matched again later.

3D explorer

Trunk: The person the 3D tree is grown from. Choose "Make trunk" on anyone to re-grow the tree from them.
Branches: Each fork is a person’s parents. Branches rise by birth year, so people from the same era sit at the same height; the faint rings mark each half-century.
Leaves: The earliest known ancestor on each line, where the research currently stops.
Roots: The trunk person’s descendants, spreading below the ground.
Color modes: Lineage colors each grandparent’s line; Birthplace colors by state or country of birth; Lifespan runs from red (short lives) to green (long lives); Century colors by century of birth.