Genealogy Vocabulary in English — 20 Essential Terms

An ancestor is a person from whom you are descended — a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, and so on, going back through time. A descendant is a person who is descended from you or another specific individual — your children, grandchildren, and all future generations of your family line. These two terms define opposite directions along a family line: ancestors are in the past, descendants are in the future. In genealogical charts, ancestors are usually shown moving upward or outward from the subject, while descendants extend downward or inward.

Parish registers are records kept by individual church parishes recording the baptisms, marriages, and burials of their congregation members. In England and Wales, they date back in many cases to 1538, when Thomas Cromwell ordered their creation, and they remained the principal record of vital events until civil (government) registration began in 1837. For genealogists researching family history before the Victorian era, parish registers are often the only available record of births, marriages, and deaths. They are held in county archives and many have been digitised and indexed on genealogical websites such as Ancestry and Findmypast, making them searchable online.

A census record is a periodic government count of the population, and for genealogists it is one of the most valuable sources available. British census records from 1841 to 1911 (the most recent available to the public) record each person's name, age, gender, occupation, place of birth, and relationship to the head of household. Later censuses added further details such as the number of years married and number of children born and surviving. Together, these details allow researchers to identify family members, confirm relationships, establish approximate birth years, and locate the family's place of origin — all from a single document.

The maternal line traces ancestry through mothers exclusively: you → your mother → your mother's mother → her mother, and so on. The paternal line traces ancestry through fathers: you → your father → your father's father → his father, and so on. These lines are significant in genealogical DNA testing because specific types of DNA are inherited exclusively along one or the other: mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) passes from mother to all children and can trace the maternal line; Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) passes from father to sons only and can trace the paternal line. Both types can identify living relatives who share the same line.

Probate records are legal documents produced when a deceased person's estate is formally administered. They typically include the will itself (if one was made), an inventory of the deceased's possessions and their estimated values, and records of how the estate was distributed. For genealogists, these documents are exceptionally valuable because they often name family members explicitly — listing children, grandchildren, siblings, or other relatives as beneficiaries — and may provide details about the deceased's economic circumstances, occupation, and community relationships that do not appear in any other surviving record. Probate records held in archives are often centuries old.

Genealogical DNA testing analyses specific regions of a person's genome and compares them with those of other people who have taken the same test. The most common types are autosomal DNA tests, which can identify relatives across all family lines going back approximately five to seven generations; Y-DNA tests, which trace the direct paternal line; and mitochondrial DNA tests, which trace the direct maternal line. DNA matches can confirm suspected family connections, break through brick walls where records no longer exist, identify unknown relatives, and provide estimates of ethnic and geographic origins. DNA evidence is now widely used alongside documentary research to verify or challenge family trees.

A pedigree chart (also called an ancestor chart) focuses on a single individual and shows only their direct ancestors — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. — arranged in a branching structure that grows wider as it goes back in time. It shows a single line of descent, not collateral relatives such as siblings, aunts, or cousins. A family tree is a more general and flexible term for any visual representation of family relationships. It may show descendants from a common ancestor moving forward in time, include collateral relatives, and present the information in a variety of chart formats. In everyday use, “family tree” and “pedigree chart” are often used interchangeably, but in professional genealogy they have distinct meanings.

Intestate describes a person who dies without having made a valid will. When this happens, the law dictates how the estate must be distributed — usually prioritising spouses and children. Because no will was made, a court typically appoints an administrator (rather than an executor named in a will) to manage the estate, and the resulting legal paperwork — including letters of administration and inventories of assets — is often preserved in probate archives. For genealogists, intestate records can be particularly valuable because the process of identifying legal heirs requires the court to document family relationships explicitly, creating a record that might not otherwise exist.

Surname variations in historical records are extremely common and can cause significant confusion for genealogists. The main reasons are: clerks recorded names phonetically, spelling what they heard rather than following standardised orthography (standardised spelling only became common in the nineteenth century); many people were illiterate and could not correct their name in a record; names from other languages — particularly Irish, Welsh, Gaelic, and European languages — were anglicised by English-speaking clerks in ways that varied from clerk to clerk; and handwriting in old documents is often difficult to read, causing transcription errors. Searching for multiple spelling variants and using soundex or fuzzy-search tools in databases is essential when working with historical records.

The most effective approach is to practise researching a real family — ideally your own — using English-language genealogical databases such as Ancestry, Findmypast, or FamilySearch. As you encounter census records, parish registers, probate documents, and migration records, the vocabulary on this page will appear naturally in context and become meaningful and memorable. Reading the help articles, research guides, and blog posts on these platforms is also very effective, as they are written in clear, practical English and explain precisely the terms used. Practise the 20 words with Flash Cards on LexFizz, then test yourself with Matching Pairs to reinforce what you have learned.