Gramps Glossary

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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.
For a list of pages dedicated to terms in this Glossary, see Category:Terminology

 A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

A

Active Person
(core concept) - The person designated as the momentary center of focus in the open Gramps database. The perspective of this person defines the context for actions and for displaying all the surrounding information. Changing this focus is done by navigating the Active Person selection to another person.
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 (its 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 the role of 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 a marriage ceremony who will have the role of wife in the marriage. See also: mother.

C

celebrant
(event role) A term describing a role of the person who performs a rite, especially referring to a priest at the Eucharist.
Gramps-citation.png
Citation
(Citations prim. obj.) - Contains the information that enables you or others to locate your source document.
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

date
(sec. obj.) - Dates in Gramps are much more complex than just a month, day, and year. Dates are always in a particular calendar, can span a time frame, the Date Quality can be approximate, and have support for many other subtleties specific to genealogy data.
DNA
  1. acronym: deoxyribonucleic acid
  2. a nucleic acid that carries genetic information
DTD
acronym: Document Type Definition

E

Gramps-event.png
Event
(Events prim. obj.) - Contains the information related to an event.
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 participants as desired. Each Person may play different roles but more than one Person might play the same role. The Event role captures this. Some common roles are pre-defined but the user can add other custom Roles by just typing in the new appropriate role in the Event Reference Editor.
event type
The general denominator to which an event belongs, e.g., a christian, civil, tibetan, ... marriage, are all denoted by the event type marriage. See events in Gramps for an overview.

F

Family
  1. Gramps-family.png
    Family (Family prim. obj.) - Contains the information specific to relationships between people. This typically contains one or two parents and zero or more children.
    The Family relationship 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 can also contain only parts of this (e.g., two brothers, a mother and child). People can be part of several families (adoption, remarried, ...)
  2. 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 genealogical data. The open specification for the GEDCOM format was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as an aid to genealogical research. The last standard release was version 5.5 in 1996 with a 5.5.1 draft update presented for comment in 1999. As an Open Standard, there are extensive and constantly changing incompatibilities between implementations and data loss when transferring GEDCOM formatted data between competing software tools is common.
Gramps
Gramps is an open-source genealogy program, a free software project and community.
The reverse engineered GRAMPS (Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System) acronym is being phased out in favor of Gramps as the official name of the software. All upper-case software names have become unfashionable.
gramplet
a Gramplet is a plug-in or addon widget that extends the functionality of Gramps by providing a dynamic view and interface to the Family Tree data. 3rd party Gramplets, reports, quick views, and tools are managed with the Plug-in Manager.
See the Gramplets for Python Developers for independent development information.
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.

H

Home Person
(core concept) - The designated Home Person is the foundational Person in the Tree (the currently open Gramps database). This Person is the central target of genealogical research and family references extend from this center. Ideally, every person, event and source in the Tree will (however directly or indirectly) relate back to the Home Person.
By default, the database reports describe everything else in contextual relation to this person. The Status Bar, the Quick View called "Relation to Home Person", and the Gramplet called "Deep Connections" all describe different aspects of the relationship of the Active Person to the Home Person.
You (or your client) are customarily designated (set) as the Home Person. But a different Home Person might be temporarily set when generating reports or when researching a complex biography or obituary.
Fascinating tidbits often lure Gramps researchers into wandering off-course. When the Active Person has become lost, the bearings can be instantly regained by navigating the Active Person selection back to the Home Person.
Navigate to Home Person - keyboard shortcut Alt+Home or press the toolbar Symbol question.svgHome button.

I

J

K

L

M

matronym
personal name based on the name of one's mother
Gramps-media.png
Media
(Media prim. obj.) - Contains the information related to a media object. This includes images, documents, or any other type of related files.

N

Gramps-notes.png
Note
(Notes prim. obj.) - Contains the information related to a note. Records in the Note Category contain free-form text with basic formatting and linking features. That text is created and modified using the Notes Editor.

O

P

patronym
personal name based on the name of one's father
Gramps-person.png
Person
(People prim. obj.) - Contains the information specific to an individual person in the People category.
Gramps-place.png
Place
(Places 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: Citations Citation, Events Event, Family Family, Media Media, Notes Note, People Person, Places Place, Repositories Repository, Sources (v3.4.x) Source, 16x16-gramps-tag.png Tag.
Private tag
The Private option tags information that should be redacted when sharing data or printing reports. Records are shown with: a locked padlock when private; and, an unlocked padlock when public. Clicking the padlock icon toggles between public & private. This manual override supplements the automated Probably Alive and custom Filter features.

Q

R

Gramps-repository.png
Repository
(Repositories prim. obj.) - Contains the information related to a repository.
role
function performed or part played by a person (or other Gramps object) in a particular situation. When objects of Gramps are linked, a Reference is created where the Role disambiguates the relative nature of the reference. 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)
Gramps-source.png
Source
(Sources (v3.4.x) prim. obj.) - A person (family, friend, another researcher), thing (book, magazine newspaper, census), or place (courthouse, church, library, genealogical/historical society) from which information comes, arises, or is obtained.

T

Gramps-tag.png
Tag
(16x16-gramps-tag.png prim. obj.) - A label that can be attached to a Citations Citation, Events Event, Family Family, Media Media, Notes Note, People Person, Places Place, Repositories Repository or Sources (v3.4.x) Source for the purpose of easy identification and filtering.
A keyword or phrase used to group the collection to produce a report.

U

V

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

Y

Z

Tango-Dialog-information.png
Wiki manual

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