Genealogy

At some time in their lives a lot of people become interested in their origins. They become curious about their family history, their roots. Some people are quite happy to just go back two or three generations and leave it at that. Others "get hooked" on genealogy and trace back their family's history for generation after generation.

If you are carrying out research regarding your ancestry, trying to put together a family tree or finding your roots by exploring your family's past, there are a great number of genealogy-related records available to you. The list of documents that can provide information about your family's history is almost endless and sometimes surprising.

There are the obvious sources, including birth, marriage, divorce, death, burial and baptism records. These can be found in church registers, civil registration documents or other sources. But there are also a number of records available providing an almost endless source for family history data obtainable for the genealogist in private records, like letters, documents, autobiographical texts, guest lists for birthday parties or funerals etc. If you are very lucky, someone may have already done the ground work and researched a basic family tree.

Furthermore, there are public sources, like newspapers or magazines, which may have birth, engagement and marriage announcements, death notices or obituaries with an abundance of useful genealogical information.

I have put together a list of German-English translations and/or definitions and/or synonyms of genealogy-related terms as well as English-German translations of family history related terms which you may find useful should your family research lead you to German sources. I have included terms I have come across during the translation of letters and documents. I have also listed a number of possible sources for genealogy-related information. Where I have not been able to find an English or German equivalent term, I have given a definition or explanation. Some historical background is given, where available. I shall constantly add to this dictionary. If you are looking for a word and cannot find it in my dictionary, do contact me and I shall be happy to research it for you and, if the search is successful, add it to the list.

Should you find inaccuracies, not understand a definition or think an important term is missing, please contact me. I would like the information I provide to be as useful and accurate as possible, so if you know of improvements for my German-English genealogy dictionary, I am interested in hearing from you.

Further information on the various English-German translation services I provide can be found by visiting my Services Pages for Businesses or Private Clients.