Genealogy is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members. The results are often displayed in charts or written as narratives. The field of family history is broader than genealogy, and covers not just lineage but also family and community history and biography.
The House of Habsburg, also known as the House of Austria, was one of the most prominent and important dynasties in European history.
A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather, or an earlier male ancestor. It is the male equivalent of a matronymic.
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, unlike the Western tradition in which surnames are written last. Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but the great proportion of Han Chinese people use only a relatively small number of these surnames; 19 surnames are used by around half of the Han Chinese people, while 100 surnames are used by around 87% of the population. A report in 2019 gives the most common Chinese surnames as Wang and Li, each shared by over 100 million people in China. The remaining eight of the top ten most common Chinese surnames are Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou.
Family is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the "walnut family".
A surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several given names and surnames are possible in the full name. In modern times the "hereditary" requirement is a traditional, although common, interpretation, since in most countries a person has a right for a name change.
Chinese names are personal names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Sinophone world. Sometimes the same set of Chinese characters could be chosen as a Chinese name, a Hong Kong name, a Japanese name, a Korean name, a Malaysian Chinese name, or a Vietnamese name, but they would be spelled differently due to their varying historical pronunciation of Chinese characters.
Japanese names in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by a given name. Japanese names are usually written in kanji, where the pronunciation follows a special set of rules. Because parents when naming children, and foreigners when adopting a Japanese name, are able to choose which pronunciations they want for certain kanji, the same written form of a name may have multiple readings. In exceptional cases, this makes it impossible to determine the intended pronunciation of a name with certainty. Even so, most pronunciations chosen for names are common, making them easier to read. While any jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji may be used as part of a name, names may be rejected if they are believed to fall outside what would be considered an acceptable name by measures of common sense.
The House of Windsor is the reigning house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. The house's name was inspired by the historic Windsor Castle estate. Since it was founded on 17 July 1917, there have been five British monarchs of the House of Windsor: George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II, and Charles III. The children and male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, also genealogically belong to the House of Oldenburg since Philip was by birth a member of the Glücksburg branch of that house.
The Rothschild family is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish noble banking family originally from Frankfurt. The family's documented history starts in 16th-century Frankfurt; its name is derived from the family house, Rothschild, built by Isaak Elchanan Bacharach in Frankfurt in 1567. The family rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, who established his banking business in the 1760s. Unlike most previous court factors, Rothschild managed to bequeath his wealth and established an international banking family through his five sons, who established businesses in Paris, Frankfurt, London, Vienna, and Naples. The family was elevated to noble rank in the Holy Roman Empire and the United Kingdom.
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A dynasty may also be referred to as a "house", "family" or "clan", among others.
A personal name, full name or prosoponym is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that one individual. In many cultures, the term is synonymous with the birth name or legal name of the individual. In linguistic classification, personal names are studied within a specific onomastic discipline, called anthroponymy. As of 2023, aside from humans, dolphins and elephants have been known to use personal names.
A given name is the part of a personal name that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group who have a common surname. The term given name refers to a name usually bestowed at or close to the time of birth, usually by the parents of the newborn. A Christian name is the first name which is given at baptism, in Christian custom.
Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional way of identifying a person's family name, given name, and patronymic name in East Slavic cultures in Russia and some countries formerly part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
A birth name is the name given to a person upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth register may by that fact alone become the person's legal name.
Placodonts are an extinct order of marine reptiles that lived during the Triassic period, becoming extinct at the end of the period. They were part of Sauropterygia, the group that includes plesiosaurs. Placodonts were generally between 1 and 2 m in length, with some of the largest measuring 3 m (9.8 ft) long.
Cyamodus is a genus of placodonts known from several species described from Middle-Late Triassic of Europe and China. The genus was described by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer in 1863, based on specimens found in Germany. Like some other placodonts, Cyamodus has an armoured carapace composed of irregular hexagonal plates, with the mouth containing a small number of large, rounded teeth that were likely involved in crushing hard shelled organisms (durophagy).
Psephoderma is a genus of placodonts very similar to the related genera Placochelys and Cyamodus. Psephoderma had a flattened skull and a narrow, straight rostrum, much narrower than that of its relatives. Inside this skull, embedded in the jaws, were rounded teeth specialized for crushing the shellfish it ate. Unlike henodontid placodonts, Psephoderma's carapace was divided into two pieces, one on the shoulders and back, and another on the ventral end. Psephoderma grew to 180 centimetres (5.9 ft) long, larger than many of its relatives, and lived in the Late Triassic, about 210 million years ago. It was one of the last placodonts to live. Fossils of Psephoderma have been found in the Rhaetian deposits in the Alps and in England, hence the specific names.
Modern Family is an American television sitcom created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan. It aired on ABC from September 23, 2009, to April 8, 2020, for 11 seasons and 250 episodes. The series follows the lives of three diverse family set-ups living in suburban Los Angeles, who are interrelated through their patriarch, Jay Pritchett.
Bernhard Peyer was a Swiss paleontologist and anatomist who served as a professor at the University of Zurich. A major contribution was on the evolution of vertebrate teeth.
