Genealogical sign
A genealogical sign or symbol is an image that can be used as a letter or drawing to represent a person or an occurrence that is common or common to almost every person. Genealogical signs and abbreviations are used in genealogy in order to be able to represent relationships in a space-saving manner.
Current uses and regulations
Genealogical symbols and abbreviations
The following table explains the family history symbols that, according to the Duden , can be used in corresponding texts to save space. With computer programs, some icons may not be displayed correctly depending on your web browser and system.
| Symbol and code point | Alternatives | meaning | English | description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| * (U + 002A) | ∗ (U + 2217) , ✶ (U + 2736) , ＊ (U + FF0A) , ⁎ (U + 204E) | born (born) | b (born) | Asterisk (characters) / asterisk |
| 〰 (U + 3030) | ~ (U + 007E) ,≈ (U + 2248) ,﹏ (U + FE4F) | baptized (baptized) | bp, bapt (baptized) | Wavy line , tilde , cf. almost the same , wavy line below |
| † (U + 2020) | ✝ (U + 271D) , + (U + 002B) , ✠ (U + 2720) , ✝us | died (died), mortuus (lat .: deceased) | d (died) | Latin cross ( Unicode ), cross ( punctuation mark ), similar to the plus sign |
| ▭ (U + 25AD) | ⚰︎ (U + 26B0 U + FE0E) , ⚰ (U + 26B0) , [] (U + 005B + U + 005D) , ▯ (U + 25AF) | buried (buried) | t, bur (buried) | (lying) coffin , alternatively two square brackets or a standing rectangle |
| ⚱ (U + 26B1) | cremated | cremated | Funeral urn | |
| ⚭ (U + 26AD) | oo (2 × U + 006F) , ∞ (U + 221E) , ✕ (U + 2715) | married (married), marriage | m (married) | Two white, overlapping circles , two small "o" without spaces, similar to the infinity symbol |
| I ⚭ (I + U + 26AD) | I oo I + o (U + 006F) , | 1. Marriage | 1st marriage | prefixed Roman ordinal number "I" |
| II ⚭ (II + U + 26AD) , | II oo II + o (U + 006F) , | 2. marriage | 2nd marriage | prefixed Roman ordinal number "II" |
| ⚬ (U + 26AC) | o (U + 006F) , ° (U + 00B0) , | engaged (ex.) | engaged | Small white circle , single small "o" |
| ⚮ (U + 26AE) | o | o , o / o , % , ⧞ (U + 29DE) | divorced (divorced) | divorced | Two white circles with a dividing line , two "o" with a dividing line in between, similar to the percent or the "not infinite" symbol |
| ⚯ (U + 26AF) | oo , ⧟ (U + 29DF) | illegitimate / free marriage (illegitimate) | nm (illegitimate or common law union) | Two white circles with a hyphen , two “o” with a minus sign in between, multi-set characters with two ends |
| (*) | (⁎) ("(" + U + 204E + ")") | born out of wedlock | born illegitimate | Asterisks in parentheses |
| ✝ * (U + 2020 + U + 002A) | † * , + * (see above) | born dead | stillborn | a cross or a plus sign with an asterisk |
| * ✝ (U + 002A + U + 2020) | * † , * + (see above) | died on the day of birth | died on the day of birth | Asterisks with a cross or with a plus sign |
| ⚔ (U + 2694) | X (U + 0058) | fallen (found) | killed in action at war | Crossed swords , a capital "X" |
Occasionally other characters were used whose use was not widely used:
| symbol | Alternatives | meaning | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᛉ | born | Elhaz , "rune of life" | |
 |
died | "Death rune" | |
| ⚵ | (✶ on +) | baptized | |
| († to △) | to bury | Cross on a burial mound | |
| ✝⚔ | † ⚔ + X | mortally wounded | Cross and swords |
| ✝✝ | †† ++ ‡ | this line became extinct | two neighboring crosses |
| !! | Pastor | two callsigns | |
| /Surname | Child of "name" | Parent's name after slash | |
| (✝) | (†) (+) | missing | Cross in round brackets |
| (⚔) | (X) | Missed during the war | Swords in round brackets |
| ✡ | died Jewish | Star of David | |
| ☪ | died muslim | Crescent moon with star ( moon star) | |
| ☸ | died Buddhist | Dharma wheel |
Germany
The DIN 5008 standard of the German Institute for Standardization in its current form (March 2020) describes the asterisk * for the design of text works as "exemplary" characters for the word born and the long cross † or the Latin cross ✝ for the word died . With this formulation, the standard does not exclude the use of other characters (it only stipulates that "genealogical characters [...] are written with a space before and after").
Austria
The regulation, which is analogous to Germany in Austria, is contained in ÖNORM A 1080 in the current version from 2007. In point "3.3.7 Signs for 'born', 'died'" is formulated:
“The asterisk is used as the symbol for 'born' and the special symbol '†' is used for 'died'. If this is not available, the plus sign '+' can be set. A space is to be put before and after these characters. "
The following examples are given:
“The unit of frequency is named after the physicist Heinrich Hertz (* 1857; † 1894).
Dr. Sigmund Freud (* 1856, + 1939) is the founder of psychoanalysis. "
Historical development
German-speaking area
The historian Hieronymus Megiser (around 1553-1618) used preceding crosses in his family tree of the Saxon Elector Johann Georg , published in Latin in 1607 , to mark dates of death. The biographer Melchior Adam (around 1575-1622) used a theta nigrum for this in his Latin biographies . Johann Christoph Gatterer's work Abriß der Genealogie from 1788 is considered the first scientific treatise on genealogical research in the German-speaking area. He sometimes uses a preceding cross for death dates, he does not use any other genealogical symbols.
The symbols for the sexual genders are most commonly used in genealogy. In the Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste of 1853, under the keyword genealogy , Bernhard Röse was probably the first to use a square for males and a circle for females in a pictorial representation of descent relationships. He connected pairs of parents with a line, from the middle of which the children are derived downwards. This method of representation, which has prevailed over the course of a century over the symbols Mars for males and Venus for females, has become internationally binding in human genetics . Square and circle can be represented more easily than the planet symbols and can also be filled in with additional characters. B. Have inheritances sketched.
In the Genealogical Handbook of Bourgeois Families published by the Berlin genealogical association Herold since 1889 , the cross symbol was placed in front of the name of each person who had died at the time of publication. Life dates were initially born with and gest. indicated. From the fourth volume (beginning of 1896) was abbreviated born by an asterisk and died by a cross.
In 1910, Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz published his work on the use of an international auxiliary language for genealogical research . He proposed a standardization in accordance with the genealogical symbols used by the Herold Association and also developed the suggestion of an internationally usable symbol font, with which genealogical relationships should be presented in a clear, short, space and cost-saving, memorable and internationally understandable way. General encyclopedias adopted the star * and cross † characters proposed by Kekule for the introductions of the personal articles, such as the 7th edition of Meyers Konversations-Lexikon published from 1924 and the one-volume Kleine Brockhaus published from 1925 and the 1928–1935 published by F. A. Brockhaus twenty-volume 15th edition of the Großer Brockhaus .
The German Army buried Jewish members of the army who died during the First World War under a Star of David , while Christian soldiers under a cross. In the era of National Socialism which partially took Elhaz rune use, among other things, on graves of SS -Angehörigen. It was interpreted in its original form as a symbol for the beginning of life, as a so-called "life rune" and in reverse form as the end of life, as a so-called "death rune". This symbol was used until the end. When the senior officers Wolfgang Lüth and Hans-Georg von Friedeburg died in May 1945 in the special area of Mürwik , the residence of the last Reich government , they were buried side by side in the Adelby cemetery. They received an identical tombstone, in the shape of the paw cross , as used by the Wehrmacht , as well as an inscription with the said rune.
international Developement
No international standard was established. In the French-speaking world, ° is often used for born, x for married and + for deceased. In the English-speaking world, letters like b., M. and d. common as abbreviations.
The numbers of the various abbreviations and symbols that refer to the same personal historical event are in the hundreds. Even before 1910 - when the typewriter became widespread - genealogical symbols were used to save time and money. They are easy to use for handwritten records. However, they were and are only available to specialized printing companies , so that new types were quickly used elsewhere. Typewriters had to be specially equipped or converted. When the automatic writing of ancestor lists became established in the 1920s , a timely standardization of the characters was neglected.
Corresponding rules were formulated in 1958 at the IV International Congress for Genealogy and Heraldry in Brussels, but not consistently implemented. It was decided, for example, that a single lowercase letter without a period should stand for one event.
For a long time, the use of computers and computer-controlled printers did not result in international standardization of the ever-increasing genealogical symbols and abbreviations. That is why every genealogist uses, in addition to the indispensable and well-known, others that should be listed and explained in detail. Like all abbreviations, it is advisable to keep the genealogical within manageable limits.
In 2003 the expansion of the ISO standard to include genealogical symbols was prepared. In April 2005, with version 4.1.0 of the international character encoding standard Unicode, seven more family history characters were added to the standard. You can find them in the Unicode block Various symbols . The characters used in genealogy for born , baptized, and died were part of the Unicode standard from the start. This is the first time that the form (but not the use) of the most frequently used genealogical symbols has been defined internationally. The Unicode standard enables typographically correct representation and processing, transmission and archiving of some genealogical special characters worldwide , provided the appropriate fonts are installed. Symbols for gender and sexuality are also part of the Unicode standard.
If not all of the typographically correct characters listed above are available in the respective font (e.g. on a typewriter ), the corresponding substitute characters are used.
Abbreviations
In older texts there are often German or Latin abbreviations, which you need to know in order to understand the texts.
| meaning | character | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| September | 7bris | Septembris (Latin septem , "seven") |
| October | 8bris | Octobris (lat. Octo , "eight") |
| November | 9bris | Novembris (Latin novem , "nine") |
| December | 10bris, Xbris | Decembris (Latin decem , "ten") |
| of the same month | ejusd | lat. ejusdem , the same |
| last month and year | l. M. u. J. | z. E.g . : on the 22nd l. M. u. J. |
| Christian | X | Greek letter Chi (e.g .: Xoph = Christoph) |
| Days of the week | ☉, ☾ etc. | Planet signs for Sunday, Monday, etc. |
See also
- Semiotics - the science that deals with all kinds of sign systems; the general theory of the essence, of the origin (semiosis) and of the use of signs
literature
- Volkmar Weiss : Circle and square defeat Venus and Mars: On the history of symbols in genealogy and genetics . Der Herold 38th vol. (1995), pp. 319-323.
- Pierre Durye: La généalogie . Presses Universitaire de France, Paris 1961, p. 82.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duden; Volume 1: The German spelling. 20th edition. 1991, p. 71.
- ↑ a b DIN 5008 : 2020-03, Section 9.8 Genealogical symbols
- ↑ New topics in DIN 5008 (information flyer , PDF) Westermann Group , March 11, 2020, p. 2 , accessed on March 21, 2020 .
- ↑ ÖNORM A 1080: 2007 Guidelines for text design, issue date March 1, 2007, ON Österreichisches Normungsinstitut - Austrian Standards International (Ed.), Vienna 2007, p. 12. ( full text online ( memento of the original dated December 8, 2015 on the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note (PDF; p. 12)) on Jimdo Content. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- ↑ Note: This rule was provided in the withdrawn new version of ÖNORM A 1080: 2014, issue date February 15, 2014, point 4.3.6, p. 16 . Austrian Standards on the current status of ÖNORM A 1080, status: January 16, 2015> 7th bibliography. ( Full text online ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. PDF, 3888 kB; p. 16 .) on the website of Austrian Standards International. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
- ↑ Hieronymus Megiser: Tabulae Genealogicae, Quibus Illustrißimi Principis ac Domini D. Johannis Georgii, Ducis Saxoniae (digitized), Gerae ad Elistrum: Spiessius, 1607
- ↑ Genealogical symbols and signs . In: genealogy.net , accessed September 1, 2010
- ^ Johann Christoph Gatterer: Outline of the Genealogy . Göttingen 1788, digitized version on Google Books
- ^ Johann Samuelansch, Johann Gottfried Gruber (ed.): General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts , Part 57, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1853, p. 338.
- ↑ Editorial committee of the Herold Association (ed.): Genealogical Handbook of Bourgeois Families , Volume 3, 1894, unaltered reprint 1907 (digitized in the Internet archive)
- ↑ Editorial committee of the Herold Association (ed.): Genealogical Handbook of Bourgeois Families , Volume 5, 1897, unaltered print 1912 (digitized version of the Mazowiecka Biblioteka Cyfrowa)
- ^ Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz: About the use of an international auxiliary language for genealogical research . In: Communications from the Central Office for German Personal and Family History , 6th issue, Leipzig 1910, pp. 27–38. Online version
- ^ The keywords "Siglen, genealogische", in: Meyers Großes Konversationslexikon. 6th edition, vol. 21. Leipzig 1909, p. 834, and "characters, 6) genealogical Z." in: Der Große Brockhaus. 15th edition, volume 20, p. 560 refer to Kekule
- ^ Betty J. Viktoria: Heroism under National Socialism and the memorial in Hanover in 1943 . Munich 2012, chapter: The symbol - the death rune
- ↑ Symboles de généalogie at geneawiki.com
- ↑ Second revised proposal to encode symbols for genealogy and gender studies in the UCS , ISO / IEC JTC1 / SC2 / WG2 N2663, International Organization for Standardization, ( web document , pdf)
- ↑ Unicode character table "Miscellaneous Symbols" U2600 – U26FF ( PDF ) (English)
- ↑ Unicode character table "C0 Controls and Basic Latin" U0000 – U007F ( PDF ) (English)
- ↑ Unicode character table "General Punctuation" U2000 – U206F ( PDF ) (English)
