Gramps Glossary

This Glossary gives an overview of terms that appear in Gramps, with a short description, and a link to relevant articles.

For a glossary of genealogical terms, see Genealogy Glossary.

A

address

(sec. obj.) The Gramps concept of an Address is a particular location with an associated time frame. Think of it as a mailing address. It is intended to represent where a person lived and when the person lived there. The Address consists:

• Date
• Street Address
• Locality
• City
• County
• State/Province
• Postal/Zip code
• Country
• Phone

Not to be confused with a place which has a fixed position (it's location). Use this with care. For genealogical research you can also use the residence event coupled with a place. For mailing (email, postal), add an address to a person or repository.

aide

(event role) A term to refer to an assistant.

anglicisation

process of making something English

attribute

(sec. obj.) Attributes are for something permanent, or at least somewhat permanent: eye color, blood type, etc. Usually you would have not more than one of each attribute type for a person/family/etc.

B

bride

(event role) A term to refer to the woman at a marriage who will be referred to as wife after the marriage. See also: mother.

C

celebrant

(event role) A term to refer to a priest at Eucharist.

clergy

(event role) A term applied to a religious person regardless of religion. For example, a monk or priest. See http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary for more details. See also: celebrant.

custom

This indicates a user defined type, as opposed to types that are predefined in Gramps.

D

DNA

1. acronym: deoxyribonucleic acid
2. a nucleic acid that carries genetic information

DTD

acronym: Document Type Definition

E

event

(prim. obj) A defining moment in a person's life. See events for the use in genealogy, for predefined events in Gramps and suggested naming for common events.

event role

The role a person plays in an event. In Gramps an event can be linked to as many people as desired. Each person will play a different role. Event role captures this. Some common roles are predefined, others the user can add by just typing in the appropriate role.

event type

The general denominator an event belongs to. Eg a christian, civil, tibetan, ... marriage, are all denoted by the event type marriage. See events in Gramps for an overview.

F

family

(prim. obj) A Family is a core concept in Gramps. It depicts the basic relations between people. Commonly this will contain a father, a mother and some children, however, it con also contain only parts of this (eg. two brothers, a mother and child). People can be part of several families (adoption, remarried, ...)

family

(event role) An event can be coupled to a family, denoting that the entire family was involved in the event. Typically the Marriage event will be coupled to a family with event role family

G

GEDCOM

1. acronym: Genealogy Data Communication
2. a format for exchanging genealogy data

groom

(event role) A term to refer to the man at a marriage who will be referred to as husband after the marriage. See also: father.

M

matronym

personal name based on the name of one's mother

P

patronym

personal name based on the name of one's father

Place

(prim. obj.)The Gramps concept of a Place is a particular location independent of time. Over time, the same Place may have different address information due to changing borders and political situation. For example, Leningrad and St. Petersburg represent the same place, but with different names. Places in Gramps are stored in a hierarchy. A Place consists of:

• Descriptive Title
• Name
• Type (such as country, state, county ...)
• Longitude/Latitude
• Code (such as a country code or postal code)
• A list of alternative names for the place
• A list of regions which enclose the place

primary object

Primary objects are the top level objects. They contain a hierarchy of secondary objects, and can be referenced by other primary or secondary objects. In the Gramps database, primary objects and the secondary objects that they contain are stored as separate records. Each primary object type is stored in a separate table. See Using database API, Primary Objects (see also secondary object)

The primary objects are:

• Person - Contains the information specific to an individual person.
• Family - Contains the information specific to relationships between people. This typically contains one or two parents and zero or more children.
• Event - Contains the information related to an event.
• Place - Contains the information related to a specific place.
• Repository - Contains the information related to a repository.
• Source - Contains the information related to a source of information.
• Citation - Contains the information related to a citation into a source.
• Media - Contains the information related to a media object. This includes images, documents, or any other type of related files.
• Note - Contains the information related to a note.

R

role

see event role

romanization

linguistic representation of a word in the Roman (Latin) alphabet

S

secondary object

Secondary objects are contained within other objects, and cannot be referenced directly. They can contain other secondary objects. Examples include: Name, Date and Address. See Using database API, Secondary Objects (see also primary object)

W

witness

(event role) The term that applies to the people asked to be present at an event so as to be able to testify to its having taken place

X

XML

acronym: Extensible Markup Language