Geneanet is an international
genealogyGenealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
databaseA database is an integrated collection of logically related records or files consolidated into a common pool that provides data for one or more multiple uses....
. The GeneaNet project was officially launched on December 2, 1996. Today the GeneaNet database holds over 135 million entries which is equivalent to over 400 million individuals.
GeneaNet began in 1996 when several people interested in
genealogyGenealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
and computing, Jacques Le Marois, Jérome Abela et Julien Cassaigne, realized what a great instrument the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
could be for their genealogical research.
They then had the idea to share, in a single database, not the whole of their family trees but what French genealogists call a
liste éclair.
Geneanet is an international
genealogyGenealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
databaseA database is an integrated collection of logically related records or files consolidated into a common pool that provides data for one or more multiple uses....
. The GeneaNet project was officially launched on December 2, 1996. Today the GeneaNet database holds over 135 million entries which is equivalent to over 400 million individuals.
GeneaNet began in 1996 when several people interested in
genealogyGenealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
and computing, Jacques Le Marois, Jérome Abela et Julien Cassaigne, realized what a great instrument the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
could be for their genealogical research.
They then had the idea to share, in a single database, not the whole of their family trees but what French genealogists call a
liste éclair. The French idiom does not translate directly into English, where such a list would be known by the more prosaic title of
Surname Interests List. A
liste éclair is a list of
surnameA surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases a surname is a family name; the family-name meaning first appeared in 1375. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name". It is also known as a "last name". In some cultures, the surname may...
s which a genealogist is interested in, due to them appearing in their ancestry, associated to the locations where one's ancestors have lived. That file is often enriched with the years of the beginning and the end of which one holds information about each name.
Thus, comparing two
listes éclair, it is very easy to determine if they have surnames in common and, if so, to check if these surnames are located in the same place. If, when, comparing two files, the chances of finding data in common are low, when hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousand files are compared, the probability of a hit are multiplied. It is with this founding idea that GeneaNet was born, since the internet is a way to exchange and compare the
listes éclair of genealogists worldwide.
Hence, a simple search in this "index of indices" is a way to know that a given surname, in a given location, between such and such year, is studied by a given genealogist (usually as a hobby).
One can also publish an online family tree, by sending a gedcom file to the site, or by managing the family tree directly on the Geneanet site. Geneanet is based on
GeneWebGeneWeb is a free multi-platform genealogy software tool created and owned by Daniel de Rauglaudre of INRIA.GeneWeb is accessed by a Web browser, either off-line or as a server in a Web environment. It uses very efficient techniques of relationship and consanguinity computing, developed in...
software.
The ancestor of GeneaNet was called LPF,
Liste des patronymes de France, which was launched in June 1996.
See also
- Family history
Family history is the systematic narrative and research of past events relating to a specific family, or specific families.- Introduction :...
- Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
- List of genealogy portals
- List of general genealogy databases