Confucius family tree has two million members

JINAN -- He's been dead for 2,500 years but his family just keeps growing and growing - Confucius, or more properly his descendants, are alive and well and flourishing in China and across the globe, according to the latest version of his family tree which is set to triple the size of his kith and kin.
The job of registering new members to the family tree of revered Chinese thinker and educator Confucius (551-479 BC), was finished by the end of 2007, and the number in the updated tree now stands at more than two million.
The family tree will be published in 2009, according to the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee.
"We have received more than 1.3 million new entries and already stopped soliciting new ones," said Kong Dewei, a Confucius descendant who is directing the updating work.
The 1.3 million are the living members of the Confucius family who have paid the official registration fee of five yuan (70 U.S. cents), but the deceased members will also be included if their descendants can prove a collateral family tree which conforms to the Confucius Genealogy, without any charges, Kong said.
The registration work started in 1998, when Kong Deyong, 77th-generation descendant established the committee in Hong Kong. More than 450 branches were set up around the world to assist the work.
The pedigree has only been revised four times throughout history. The last revision took place in the 1930s and included 600,000 members. The fifth edition of the Confucius family tree will be published to coincide with the 2560th anniversary of the birth of the thinker next year.
Compared with previous versions, the new genealogy will for the first time include overseas and female descendants of the great philosopher.
Confucius' family tree is regarded as the world's longest, recording more than 80 generations of the sage's family.

Source: China Daily

family tree and family history information

Genealogists who seek to reconstruct the lives of each ancestor consider all historical information to be "genealogical" information. Traditionally, the basic information needed to ensure correct identification of each person are place names, occupations, family names, first names, and dates. However, modern genealogists greatly expand this list, recognizing the need to place this information in its historical context in order to properly evaluate genealogical evidence and distinguish between same-name individuals.
Family Names
Family names are simultaneously one of the most important pieces of genealogical information, and a source of significant confusion for researchers.
In many cultures, the name of a person refers to the family to which he or she belongs. This is called the family name, surname, or last name. Patronymics are names that identify an individual based on the father''s name, e.g., Marga Olafsdottir or Olaf Thorsson. Many cultures used patronymics before surnames were adopted or came into use. The Dutch in New York, for example, used the patronymic system of names until 1687 when the advent of English rule mandated surname usage. In Iceland, patronymics are used by a majority of the population. In Denmark and Norway patronymics and farm names were generally in use through the 1800s and beyond, though surnames began to come into fashion toward the end of the nineteenth century in some parts of the country. Not until 1856 in Denmark and 1923 in Norway were there laws requiring surnames.
The transmission of names across generations, marriages and other relationships, and immigration may cause difficulty in genealogical research. For instance, women in many cultures have routinely used their spouse''s surnames. When a woman remarried, she may have changed her name and the names of her children; only her name; or changed no names. Her birth name (maiden name) may be reflected in her children''s middle names; her own middle name; or dropped entirely. Children may sometimes assume stepparent, foster parent, or adoptive parent names. Because official records may reflect many kinds of surname change, without explaining the underlying reason for the change, the correct identification of a person recorded identified with more than one name is challenging.
Surname data may be found in trade directories, census returns, birth, death, and marriage records.
Given names
Genealogical data regarding given names (first names) is subject to many of the same problems as are family names and place names. Additionally, the use of nicknames is very common. For example Beth, Lizzie or Betty are all common for Elizabeth, and Jack, John and Jonathan may be interchanged.
Middle names provide additional information. Middle names may be inherited, follow naming customs, or be treated as part of the family name. For instance, in some Latin cultures, both the mother''s family name and the father''s family name are used by the children.
Historically, naming traditions existed in some places and cultures. Even in areas that tended to use naming conventions, however, they were by no means universal. Families may have used them some of the time, among some of their children, or not at all. A pattern might also be broken to name a newborn after a recently deceased sibling, aunt or uncle.
An example of a naming tradition from England, Scotland and Ireland:
Child
Namesake
1st son
paternal grandfather
2nd son
maternal grandfather
3rd son
father
4th son
father''s oldest brother
1st daughter
maternal grandmother
2nd daughter
paternal grandmother
3rd daughter
mother
4th daughter
mother''s oldest sister
Another example is in some areas of Germany, where siblings were given the same first name, often of a favourite saint or local nobility, but different second names by which they were known (Rufname). If a child died, the next child of the same gender that was born may have been given the same name. It is not uncommon that a list of a particular couple''s children will show one or two names repeated.
Personal names have periods of popularity, so it is not uncommon to find many similarly-named people in a generation, and even similarly-named families; e.g., "William and Mary and their children David, Mary, and John".
Many names may be identified strongly with a particular gender; e.g., William for boys, and Mary for girls. Others may be ambiguous, e.g., Lee, or have only slightly variant spellings based on gender, e.g., Frances (usually female) and Francis (usually male).

source: Find your family history

Tips for Organizing Your Genealogy Research

Researching your family tree is very rewarding. You find things you never knew before and identify yourself with your heritage. It can also be frustrating when you can’t find what you are looking for. Finding that one source that helps you go one generation deeper, or find a new family fact is satisfying to us genealogy hunters. Building a solid family history with proper sources requires many hours of research and tons of patience. As you make progress, it’s important to carefully track all of your findings. This is essential to preserving your family history and ensures that all the hours of hard work you put into growing your family tree won’t go unnoticed.
To help you build a precise family history and a reliable family tree, here are tips for organizing your genealogy research:
Manage Your Sources
Once you start your family search and start to find sources, be sure to document where you found the source. This is known as the repository. Make sure you write down everything and copy all pertinent family information. Make it easy for yourself and others to go back and investigate the information again. And yes, on more than one occasion, you will end up needing to go back and look up the document or directing a relative to the same source.
Sources abound out on the Internet, the library, genealogical societies, and government records. It’s really easy to copy information from someone's family tree, but beware of doing this. Most trees contain little or no sources and you should find the documents that substantiate family history, before copying and sharing your information with others. If you do copy the information, make sure you give credit to the person and repository where you found the information. Your family search should always contain sources to back-up the family information you record.
Keep Track of the Little Things
Recording both your research methods and your findings will help keep your family search efforts up-to-date and, if another family member takes over as family record keeper in the years to come, this documentation will make his or her task easier.
Don’t just document your successes but your failures, too. Pointing out dead ends will help prevent future family genealogists from making the same mistake and could even remind you of leads you followed that went nowhere.
Many family genealogists find that carefully documenting their findings (both the successful leads and the dead ends) often helps in paving the way for a new research idea. You never know when or where you’re going to come across a key piece of information that will unlock more of your family history.
Ensure an Accurate Family Tree
You will inevitably find sources that contradict family information that you thought to be true. This may be due to inaccurate memories passed down within your family, or it could be a mistake by the person who created the written record. You may even find one historical document that contradicts another historical document. For example, a census could have been filled out by someone who didn't bother to ask the spelling of the family member’s name or the information could have been given by a neighbor or the eldest child in the house. To make sure your family tree is as accurate as possible, document all dates and information and make notes as to why you think certain information is correct. You can spend years trying to figure out which exact dates and places are relevant when you have multiple documents that don't have the exact same information. Documenting all the information you find from your family search will make it easier to compare notes later.
Stay Focused
When you get over-whelmed with your research, document what you have done, take a break, and come back to it later. At the end of the day, the process should be enjoyable and rewarding, so when things get frustrating take a step back and take a deep breath. This will help you stay energized and focused on the task at hand.

source: Article Base

The Many Benefits of Making a Family Tree

Researching your family tree has become a popular past time for many people. The thought of getting to know your ancestors and finding out how they lived, and what their life was like has enthralled many; and the internet has made it much easier to find vital information. It is akin to assembling a jigsaw puzzle about ancestors, one generation at a time. Most people have dreams of tracing their family tree back to royalty, knights, or founding fathers.There are other, important benefits to researching your family tree, however.• New Friendships - there are countless others online and off researching their own family histories. What better way to make a new friend than find something in common? You can share tips, ideas, and strategies to help each other and build lifelong friendships along the way.• Personal Growth - researching and assembling information about your ancestors can be a wonderful project on your own personal growth and education. You will discover skills you never even knew you had. You will have a sense of accomplishment that is unmatched with anything you have ever known.• A treasured heirloom to be passed on from generation to generation - this will be a work in progress, as each new generation will add their information and share their stories and memories, along with photos, journals and other heirlooms.• Getting closer to your living relatives - interviewing your oldest living relatives can bring you closer together, especially if you haven't gotten to know them well in the past. Most likely, they will be happy to share their stories and memories with you. It will make them feel less lonely, and more like a useful part of the family. Visit them as often as you can; if they live too far away, call or write often.• Medical history - as you conduct your research, you will most likely come across medical information, such as heart conditions, cancer, or other hereditary diseases that your ancestors suffered from. This will give you much needed information that you can pass on to your own family doctor.• Geographical history - not only will you learn about people, you will learn about places and interesting times in history. What city was your great-grandmother born in? What was it like? What was the population? Where did she go to school? Has the city changed its name since then? There is an abundance of information to be found, not only on whom, but where.Researching your family tree takes time, patience, and effort; but the payoff is tremendous. The benefits far outweigh any challenges. It is something that should be considered a life-long process that is constantly in need of updating as family members get married, have children, grandchildren, etc. It is something to be treasured from generation to generation. Keep a journal of your progress, as well as various notes and things you have learned along the way. Someday, you may be the one being researched, and the more that you can aid in the process, the better.

Source: Article Base

Family tree and family union to avoid Domestic Violence Facts

Domestic Violence Facts As sad and shocking it may be, more than 2.5 million women experience some form of violence each year in the U.S. Domestic violence is an ugly reality faced by most women and sometimes even men. It refers to the abuse between spouses, non-married intimate people, same sex relations and strangers. It is an act of physical and non-physical assault. Domestic violence does not consider gender, race, education, socio-economic and culture factors, it just perpetrates its victim with fear, loss of pride and sometimes even life. The ironic thing about this form of abuse is that it doesn't end with the victims death, it evolves itself and engulfs the victims family in a vicious cycle of pain, depression and hurtful memories.
Domestic Violence Facts
Women through ages have been subjected to domestic abuse more than men, it only came to national attention when this malaise resulted in large number of deaths and suicides among the abused women. The purpose of domestic violence is to threaten, coerce, humiliate, injure, intimidate, manipulate and control the victim. Domestic violence can be perpetrated in many forms, such as:
Physical Abuse: The intentional use of physical force for hitting, shoving, slapping, biting, gabbing, denying medical care or forcing alcohol and/or drug use.
Sexual Abuse: Attempting to force sexual contact without consent, which includes marital rape, molestation, date rape or any demeaning sexual act.
Economic Abuse: Withholding money and other economic resources like employment from the victim making them economically handicapped and dependent on the abuser. Even working women are susceptible to such harassment.
Emotional Abuse: Here the abuser aims to diminish the victims self-worth and esteem by constantly criticizing, calling names or undermining competence, either privately or publicly.
Psychological Abuse: Sometimes also known as mental abuse, it includes intimidation, destruction of property, isolating the victim from family, friends and colleagues, threatening physical harm to self, victim or the children in the house.
Stalking: This form of abuse involves unwanted attention by the abuser. Here the abuser ensures that the victim knows that she or he is being followed and watched constantly.
Domestic abuse against women is a violation of human rights. This global culture of discrimination cannot be justified by any cultural, political and religious grounds. Domestic violence is not just restricted to United States alone, but is a worldwide phenomena. Acid burning, dowry deaths, honor killings, female genital mutilation are just a few instances of abuse against women.
Many women who have been or are being abused have long-term health and psychological problems. Besides that, domestic violence has a lasting negative impact on the families and friends of the victims, especially children. Frequent exposure to abuse at home exposes children to numerous social, psychological and physical problems. It leads them to believe that violence is a normal way of life and being an abuser or a victim is acceptable.
Myths About Domestic Violence
Abuse within the family is a rare occurrence: The statistics never show the right figure which is extremely high, simply because most crimes do not get reported.
The abuser is mostly the stranger: Most reported crimes show the perpetrator of domestic violence as family members or known people.
Women say 'No' when they actually mean 'Yes': This is the most common excuse made by sexual violators. The truth couldn't be far from this. Women say 'no' because they mean 'no'.
Women like to be battered, depraved and confined, otherwise they would leave: A large number of abused women would like to leave but they are restrained by social and economic realities. Women with children often have the fear of losing them to the abusers.
Domestic abuse is often committed by people of the lower income class: Reported crimes have shown that violence has nothing to do with one's socio-economic and educational status.
Alcohol and drugs cause violence: It has been observed that individuals under the influence of alcohol and drugs abuse their victims physically and sexually. However, the abuser needs to have a stable state of mind in order to exploit the victim economically and emotionally. This psychological abuse may be attributed to his conduct and not the influence of alcohol.
Prevention Against Domestic Abuse
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law, which was passed by President Bill Clinton on 13th September, 1994. Penalties for violations depend on the extent of the bodily injury to the victim. Penalties include prison time, fines, monetary compensation to the victims, community service or probation and compulsory domestic violence treatment programs. Penalties also differ from state to state.
The state and many NGO's are working independently and collectively to support and rehabilitate battered women and families. They provide legal assistance and protection, shelter, employment and counseling to the victims. But much more needs to be done to eliminate societal violence against all women and children.
The effects of domestic violence on human society are enormous, they cost the entire nation much more than legal and rehabilitation cost. Hopelessness, pessimism and an entire generation of abusers and victims who will continue this cycle, will be the price to pay, if this malaise is not curtailed immediately.

source: Buzzle

How To Organize Your Family History

How many times have you set about to write your family history, only to run across the daunting task of putting it all together in a manner which will make sense?
Many people give up writing their family history at this point. Too much information! So much to write about! If you are like me, you’ve spent years researching your ancestors only to find piles of papers, notes, and website URLs piling up on your desktop.
The key to writing your family history is to GET ORGANIZED, but take it one small step at a time!
We’ve all seen articles on how to organize your clutter and make our homes neat and pleasing. This knowledge can be applied to genealogy research, and writing your history, also!
One interesting thing I have noticed is that most experts on home organization emphasize ‘one step at a time.’ If you choose to do it all at once, you’ve set yourself up for failure before you’ve even begun. Giving yourself permission to do just a little at a time will make the task so much easier.
I know when I began cleaning out the clutter of closets, kitchen cabinets and ‘junk drawers’ I began to feel overwhelmed. I was making a bigger mess and never getting it all finished. What a self deafeating experience! Another side effect was not knowing where anything was after I’d made such a mess.
Being a clutter-junkie was something I inherited from my mother, the difference being, she always seemed to have it all organized and easily accessible. In my case, I am disorganizationally organized. I know where that note about Uncle Harry is in that pile of papers on my desktop, thank you very much. I remember where I put that scrap of paper with Auntie Dorothy’s phone number from 1982 on it. My mother laughed too, so go ahead - laugh out loud!
If you are a ‘neatnik’, ignore this article. If you are a ‘clutter junkie’, read on!
One day, while working on a family history project, I was feeling quite overwhelmed at all the information I had and was able to produce no clearly written story. My mother’s voice came back to haunt me: “You need to get organized…you need to get organized…you need to get organized.”
Ok, alright, Mother, I hear you! But, HOW?
Remember your mother telling you: “Everything has a place…blah blah blah”? Well, it’s true (don’t tell my mother I said that - I‘ll never live it down).
It’s not easy for us clutter junkies, however. I decided I would take it…one small step at a time. First, I cleaned off my desktop. I just threw everything in a couple boxes. There. Done. Finished. Finis.
Well, that was so easy, I decided to take the next step. Sorting out one box. I had file folders, so I placed each surname in a separate folder. Easy enough. It was all going well.
The next step was soon to follow, as the last had been so easy. Before I knew it, it was all organized, the information easily found, and I was ready to begin writing!
The next step was actually writing my family history.
I’ll take it…one step at a time.
Article Source: http://www.familyhistoryarticles.com

Find Distant Relatives on Family Tree

The desire to learn more about your family tree is a natural one, given the long history of migration and ethnic mingling the world has witnessed. Generationdb.com helps you trace your family members and relatives, and helps you become aware of where you belong. Some of the results can throw up many pleasant surprises, and who knows, you may just discover some relatives in a far-flung or exotic country.

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By registering with generationdb.com, you open doors to information about your ancestry by getting acquainted with your grandparents or other relatives. Knowing more about your family history helps you know more about the quaint social customs and values you have followed for long, but never knew the origin of. You will be able to trace as much as you can find on distant relatives, cousins and other people related to you. Try it, you will be amazed by the results!

The best thing about our website is that you need not put in any legwork to track down your family members. Know more about your family history and traditions by registering with us. You can also submit additional data related to your family, so that we can help you refine your search, and help your distant cousins find you. By registering with us, you will find more about your family history, and know more about your heritage.

Your family tree could be very complex, with several branches and roots. We instruct you on how to source information about your family connections should you wish to submit a family tree. Do not hesitate, register with us now to know more about your family tree. Trace distant cousins in the land from where your ancestors migrated, or find out the fascinating history of your origin. Nothing can be as satisfying as tracing your extended family. Let us help you in your search for other members of your family.