Genealog

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who researches and traces the ancestry and family lineage of individuals or households
2. Someone who studies family histories and charts how relatives descend from one another over generations
3. A researcher who reconstructs bloodlines and pedigrees, tracing who descended from whom across the centuries

Etymology: "Genealog-" is the stem behind "genealogy," "genealogist," and "genealogical." It comes from the Greek "genealogia," built from "genea," meaning birth, descent, or generation, and "logia," meaning an account or telling. A genealogy is literally an account of descent. Greek "genea" belongs to the same root family as "genos," meaning kind or race. That root also gives English "genus," "generate," and "gene," so "genealogy" and "gene" are distant relatives, both rooted in the idea of being born. English took the term through Old French in the Middle English period, when it was used mainly to list a person's or family's ancestors.