How it works

The relationship engine

One calculation answers both 'how is this person related to me?' and 'how are these two people related?'

One calculation, two questions

“How is this person related to me?” and “How are these two people related?” are the same computation with a different starting point. The archive runs one engine for both, so the two answers can never disagree.

What it works out

The common ancestor, how many generations up and down the path runs, which side of the family it travels through, the relationship name, and the reverse relationship — plus a classification from immediate to distant.

What it will not do

It never guesses. Where a link is uncertain in the source documents, the result says so. Maternal relationships cannot yet be calculated, because the source shajras record the male line only.

Maternal lines: the four source documents are patrilineal — they record fathers and sons. No mother or marriage appears in any of them. Maternal-side relationships are built into the engine but will stay unavailable until that information is added to the archive.

Compare two people Set who I am