Sources & method

This is a research-grade reference, and it is built to one discipline: every factual claim carries a source and a stated certainty. We distinguish what is established from what is probable, contested, or speculative, and we never present tradition or medieval genealogical invention as documented history.

Sources are also chosen for licensing: this is a commercial site, so we separate what may be ingested from what may only be read and cited.

Images & illustration

Images on this site are held to the same standard as the text. We use only public-domain or openly-licensed material — from collections such as the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress and the British Library — and we credit the source and licence on every picture.

An old engraving or portrait is used to evoke a period, never to impersonate a person. A 19th-century picture of a Highlander is not a photograph of anyone’s ancestor, and we caption it plainly as illustrative so it is never mistaken for evidence. Historical maps and documents that a reader might want to examine are shown in their true tones, not stylised.

We do not use AI-generated images of people, places, artefacts, documents or events. A synthetic “portrait of a 17th-century Highlander” is indistinguishable from a real one and would fabricate the very evidence this site exists to refuse. Where we need a diagram — a map, a chart, a family tree — we draw it ourselves and label what it shows.

Source registry

[bremenMigration] “A Century of Migration” — a dataset of 735,545 emigrant records from the port of Bremen, 1830–1939 (from Bremen Society for Family Research / MAUS transcriptions; publ. MDPI Data), Zenodo doi:10.5281/zenodo.17977460 — dataset. CC BY 4.0 (attribution required) · usage: ingest · link
Structured, enriched passenger-list data (62 fields) for emigrants leaving via Bremen. We compute our own aggregates (etl/bremen_emigrants.py). Bremen was ONE port — Hamburg carried a comparable share, and its data is Ancestry-locked; and the surviving Bremen lists are a fraction (most originals destroyed), so the peak German emigration decades (1860s–1890s) are largely missing. The record is partial and biased by what survived.
[test23andMe] 23andMe — Ancestry Service & customer-care pages; TTAM Research Institute / 23andMe.org press releases — other. Vendor material — cite, never reproduce · usage: cite · link
Vendor primary source for 23andMe specs. The 2023 credential-stuffing breach (~6.9M affected) and 2025 Chapter 11 → sale to the TTAM nonprofit are documented in news/AG sources cited on the page.
[aadr] Allen Ancient DNA Resource (AADR) v66, Mallick & Reich (Harvard), doi:10.7910/DVN/FFIDCW — dataset. CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) · usage: ingest · link
Ancient-DNA annotation compendium. We compute our OWN population-level Y/mtDNA haplogroup frequencies (etl/aadr_frequencies.py); individual genotypes are never fetched or stored (population-level-only discipline).
[ancestryDNA] AncestryDNA — product, corporate and transparency pages (ancestry.com) — other. Vendor material — cite, never reproduce · usage: cite · link
Vendor primary source for AncestryDNA specs, pricing, region model (Scotland as a distinct region + Genetic Communities) and law-enforcement position.
[lordLyon] Court of the Lord Lyon — official roll of clans and chiefs — official register. Crown copyright / unclear — cite, do not scrape · usage: cite · link
Authority-of-record for recognised-chief → living vs armigerous/historical status.
[outlander] Diana Gabaldon, the Outlander novels (1991– ); the Outlander television series (Sony Pictures / Starz, 2014– ) — other. Copyrighted works — referenced as cultural primary sources, never reproduced · usage: cite
Fiction. Cited ONLY to distinguish popular-culture interest from documented history — never as evidence of descent.
[ftdna] FamilyTreeDNA — Y-DNA, Big Y-700 and law-enforcement guide (familytreedna.com) — other. Vendor material — cite, never reproduce · usage: cite · link
Vendor primary source for FTDNA’s deep-lineage Y-DNA / full-mtDNA tests and its opt-out law-enforcement matching model.
[geoNames] GeoNames geographical database (geonames.org) — dataset. CC BY 4.0 (attribution required) · usage: ingest · link
A gazetteer of ~12M place names with coordinates, modern country, and alternate/historical names. We use the cities5000 dump (etl/german_origins.py) to resolve the Bremen emigrants’ stated home towns to coordinates and modern country. Its alternate-names column is the bridge from a historical German exonym (Breslau) to the modern place (Wrocław, Poland). Matching is fuzzy — homonyms abound; a resolved point is a best guess.
[gretzinger2022] Gretzinger et al., “The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool”, Nature 610 (2022), doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05247-2 — journal article. CC BY — cite; open data · usage: cite · link
Large continental-northern-European (incl. I1) genetic input into eastern/southern England in the early medieval period.
[oxfordFNBI] Hanks, Coates & McClure (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland (OUP, 2016) — book. Proprietary (OUP) — read & paraphrase + cite, never copy entries · usage: cite
Gold-standard surname etymology; the rigorous anchor vs auto-generated junk.
[trevorRoper] Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland”, in E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge UP, 1983) — book. Copyright — read & cite, never copy · usage: cite
The classic scholarly account that the “Highland tradition” — clan tartans, much kilt and sett lore — is largely an 18th–19th-century construction, not a medieval inheritance.
[isogg] International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree — other. Reference — cite for haplogroup nomenclature only (not frequencies) · usage: cite · link
Standard nomenclature for the hierarchical Y-DNA haplogroup tree. Used for naming, never as a frequency source.
[savageGenDict] James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (Little, Brown & Co., 1860–62), 4 vols — book. Public domain (1860–62 printed edition) · usage: ingest · link
The "American PoMS" — three-generation lineages of the pre-1692 New England settlers, with English origins and arrival ships. We OCR-analyze all 4 volumes ourselves (etl/savage_settlers.py). 19th-c compiled genealogy: selective (three generations, pre-1692) and error-prone (later corrected by Torrey, which is copyright). Counts are approximate (OCR + our parsing) — a finding aid, not proof of descent.
[hottenLists] John Camden Hotten (ed.), The Original Lists of Persons of Quality … who went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600–1700 (London, 1874) — book. Public domain (1874 printed edition) · usage: ingest · link
Embarkation and muster registers of emigrants LEAVING England for the American plantations. We OCR-analyze it ourselves (etl/hotten_emigrants.py) for destinations, ages, ships and years. "Persons of Quality" is a 19th-c misnomer — mostly ordinary servants; only some ports’ registers survive, so the record is partial and biased. Counts are approximate (OCR + our parsing).
[dnaGeek] Leah Larkin, “The DNA Geek” — consumer autosomal-DNA database size tracker (thednageek.com) — other. Independent analyst — read & cite · usage: cite · link
The standard independent tracker of consumer-DNA matching-database sizes. We cite it for relative database size rather than vendors’ own (often cumulative) marketing figures.
[aberdeenPollTax1696] List of Pollable Persons within the Shire of Aberdeen, 1696 (Spalding Club, ed. J. Stuart, 1844) — book. Public domain (1844 printed edition of the 1696 tax record) · usage: ingest · link
A poll tax listing all pollable (taxable) persons in Aberdeenshire by parish, 1696 — a rare comprehensive name list of ordinary people. Wealth-biased (taxpayers only). We extract surname frequencies ourselves (etl/aberdeen_polltax.py).
[livingDNA] Living DNA — British Ancestry product pages (livingdna.com) — other. Vendor material — cite, never reproduce · usage: cite · link
Vendor primary source for Living DNA’s British sub-regional breakdown (21 British-Isles regions incl. named Scottish areas, from the reference panel).
[myHeritageDNA] MyHeritage DNA — product and privacy pages (myheritage.com) — other. Vendor material — cite, never reproduce · usage: cite · link
Vendor primary source for MyHeritage DNA specs, pricing and its “never sell/licence” + no-law-enforcement privacy pledge.
[estoniaAIS] National Archives of Estonia (Rahvusarhiiv), AIS Archival Titles — the full archival catalogue, 10,986,604 descriptions (huggingface.co/datasets/Rahvusarhiiv/AIS_archival_titles) — dataset. CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) · usage: ingest · link
The National Archives of Estonia publishes its ENTIRE catalogue as CC0, and its scanned images (Saaga) are free to view with no login — the "open bloc" exemplar. We analyse the catalogue’s shape ourselves (etl/estonia_archive.py). It covers the whole archive, not only genealogy; record types are inferred by keyword-matching Estonian/German titles (approximate, overlapping); the titles point to manuscript images, so the names inside are NOT indexed here.
[olalde2018] Olalde et al., “The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe”, Nature 555 (2018), doi:10.1038/nature25738 — journal article. Journal article — cite; open supplementary data · usage: cite · link
The ~90% Y-chromosome (R1b) turnover in Early Bronze Age Britain associated with the Beaker expansion.
[openArchieven] Open Archieven (Open Archives) — an aggregated open index of Dutch, Belgian and partner genealogical records (openarchieven.nl), Coret Genealogie — dataset. CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) — index metadata only; linked images are NOT CC0 · usage: ingest · link
A genuinely open, person-level genealogical NAME INDEX aggregating ~200 archives (~370M person-mentions). We query its statistics endpoints for aggregates only (etl/openarchieven_index.py), respecting the 4 req/s limit — no records harvested. Caveats: person-MENTIONS, not unique people; an index/finding-aid that points to sources; Dutch/Belgian-led (plus some INSEE France, Reclaim The Records); linked images fall under each archive’s own licence, not CC0.
[poms] People of Medieval Scotland, 1093–1371 (PoMS), poms.ac.uk (AHRC / Leverhulme; King’s College London & Univ. of Glasgow) — dataset. Academic prosopography; publishes Linked Open Data (RDF). Used as a finding aid over public-domain charters. · usage: cite · link
Document-linked index of everyone named in ~8,600 medieval charters. We cite the underlying public-domain charters it calendars (e.g. Brinkburn Cartulary, Newbattle Registrum), with PoMS as the access route.
[pleiades] Pleiades: a gazetteer of past places (pleiades.stoa.org) — dataset. CC BY 3.0 (attribution required) · usage: ingest · link
Ancient peoples/tribes as gazetteer entities carrying attested Greek/Latin name forms (nameAttested → alias exonyms). Pleiades numeric ID = crosswalk key (Wikidata P1584). Dates are coarse attestation, not floruit.
[ptolemyGeographia] Ptolemy, Geographia, Book II (c. AD 150) — the Greek geographer’s list of the poleis and peoples of Britain and Ireland — primary classical. Public domain (ancient text) · usage: cite
The single most important classical source naming the Iron Age peoples of Britain/Ireland. Names are exonyms filtered through Greek; many are single-attestation. Underlies most Pleiades "people" entries here.
[ragmanRoll1296] The Ragman Roll — instruments of homage and fealty of the Scots to Edward I of England, 1296 (ed. Bannatyne Club, 1834) — manuscript. Public domain (medieval documents; 1834 printed edition) · usage: cite
~1,500 Scots did homage/fealty to Edward I in 1296; ~70 original deeds survive at The National Archives, Kew (E 39). Cited for documentary name attestation.
[usCensus2010Surnames] U.S. Census Bureau, “Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census” (File B: all 162,253 surnames occurring ≥100 times) — dataset. Public domain (U.S. Government work) · usage: ingest · link
Surname counts and race/ethnicity breakdown from the 2010 decennial census. We match clan surnames against it (etl/us_census_surnames.py) to show each name’s American footprint. Frequency reflects naming history, NOT descent — a British surname is borne across very different ancestries (the ethnicity columns make this visible).
[wikidata] Wikidata — dataset. CC0 1.0 (public domain) · usage: ingest · link
[yfull] YFull YTree (github.com/YFullTeam/YTree) — a phylogenetic Y-chromosome tree with age estimates — dataset. CC BY 4.0 (attribution required) · usage: ingest · link
Full ~69,000-branch SNP-based Y tree with TMRCA ages, updated monthly. We take the age of a haplogroup and link into YFull’s live page for the deep subtree — we do not clone the tree.