Many genealogical reports use abbreviations, such as m. for male, f. for female, b. for birth, and d. for death, like this:
| abbreviation | meaning |
|---|---|
| m. | male |
| f. | female |
| x. | intersex |
| u. | unknown |
| b. | birth |
| d. | death |
| bap. | baptisation |
| bapt. | baptisation |
| chr. | christened |
| bur. | burial |
| bd. | buried |
| m. | married |
| div. | divorced |
| abt. | about |
| approx. | approximate(ly) |
| ca. | circa |
| bef. | before |
| aft. | after |
| bet. | between |
The small table to the right lists some common abbreviations.
This short table is likely incomplete, but still manages to highlight some issues with these abbreviations.
First of all, the same thing may be abbreviated in multiple ways;
baptism may be abbreviated as either bap. or bapt., depending on the author, report generator or publication.
It is sometimes even be abbreviated as b., despite the fact that doing so may create confusion, as b. is already used as an abbreviation for birth.
That introduces the second problem, that a single abbreviation may mean multiple things;
m. is used as an abbreviation of male and as an abbreviation of married;
Now, within context, the abbreviation m. isn't likely to be misunderstood, but it is less than ideal.
A third issue, the importance of which should not be underestimated, is that all these abbreviations are abbreviations of the English words.
Report and publications in other languages use abbreviations that native speakers of that language will understand,
and these abbreviations are likely to be different from and even conflict with the English abbreviations.
It is for all these reasons that many reports and publications use symbols instead of abbreviations.
Genealogists were using symbols long before they were using computers.
Handwritten documents could use any symbol the author cared to draw,
including ♂, the male sign, and ♀, the female sign.
Erly typewritten documents were limited by the repertoire of the typewriter.
A few authors would get around that limitation by, while typing a document, leaving spaces for the desired symbols, to draw them in later,
to still be able to use any symbol they liked.
Most authors however, would limit themselves to the repertoire available, and their conventions carried over into computerised genealogy.
Early computer typically offered some 8-bit extension of the 7-bit ASCII character set. All the characters in the table below occur in both Windows ANSI (code page 1252) and MacRoman (code page 1000).
| meaning | symbol | Windows ANSI code point(s) | name |
|---|---|---|---|
| birth | * | 2A | Asterisk |
| baptisation, christening | ~ | 7E | Tilde |
| death | † | 86 | Dagger |
| burial | [] | 5B 5D | Square Brackets |
| stillborn | †* | 86 2A | Dagger, Asterisk |
| born illegitimately | (*) | 28 2A 29 | Left Parenthesis, Asterisk, Right Parenthesis |
| killed in action | x | 58 | Latin Small Letter X |
| this line extinct | ++ | 2B 2B | Plus Sign, Plus Sign |
| this line extinct | ‡ | 87 | Double Dagger |
| approximate(ly) | ± | B1 | Plus-Minus Sign |
| before | < | 3C | Less-Than Sign |
| after | > | 3E | Greater-Than Sign |
| engaged | o | 6F | Latin Small Letter O |
| married | oo | 6F 6F | Latin Small Letter O, Latin Small Letter O |
| divorced | o|o | 6F 7C 6F | Latin Small Letter O, Vertical Line, Latin Small Letter O |
| divorced | o/o | 6F 2F 6F | Latin Small Letter O, Solidus, Latin Small Letter O |
| divorced | % | 25 | Percent Sign |
| divorced | ÷ | F7 | Division Sign |
| unmarried | o-o | 6F 96 6F | Latin Small Letter O, Hyphen-Minus, Latin Small Letter O |
| meaning | symbol | IBM PC (437) code point | name |
|---|---|---|---|
| burial | █ | DB | Full Block |
| married | ∞ | EC | Infinity |
| baptism | ≈ | F8 | Almost Equal To |
The IBM PC (code page 437) and MS-DOS (code page 850) character sets support so-called box drawing characters. Among those box drawing character is a rectangular box that can used to represent a coffin, and thus burial. The IBM PC character set also includes the symbol for Infinity (∞). The Infinity symbol has been used as a single-character stand-in for the marriage symbol. The IMB PC character set also includes Almost Equal To, a double wavy line, which is sometimes used for baptism instead of the Tilde.
| meaning | symbol | MacRoman (1000) code point | name |
|---|---|---|---|
| married | ∞ | B0 | Infinity |
| baptised | ≈ | C5 | Almost Equal To |
Early versions of Windows (before Unicode) did not include the Infinity symbol, Almost Equal To or box drawing characters and the regular code page; most of the limited code page space was used to provide additional accented characters. You may remember using the Infinity symbol, Almost Equal To or box drawing characters anyway; that was made possible through special fonts.
The Infinity and Almost Equal To characters was included in the Symbols font, and the box drawing characters were provided through the MS Line Draw font. Moreover, the Dos Box used the Terminal font, which is a code page 437 font instead of a code page 850 font.
| meaning | symbol | Windows 3.1 font + code point | name | ➝ | Windows ANSI (1252) code point | symbol | name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| burial | █ | MS LineDraw: DB | Full Block | ➝ | DB | Û | Latin Capital Letter U with Circumflex |
| married | ∞ | Symbol: A5 | Infinity | ➝ | A5 | ¥ | Yen Sign |
| baptism | ≈ | Symbol: BB | Almost Equal To | ➝ | BB | » | Right-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark |
The big problem with these special fonts is that they use the same limited code page space (just 256 code points) to provide additional characters;
these additional characters do not have their own code point, but abuse the code point for an existing character to provide a different character.
These special fonts are part of 16-bit Windows, but do not respect the Windows code page.
Technically, the font change signals a character set change, with each of the special fonts having its own character set.
The additional characters are tied to their special fonts, and available in word processors, where the user could change font (and thus character set),
but plain text documents had to do without it;
without the font changes, █ (Full Block) becomes Û (Latin Capital Letter U with Circumflex), and ∞ (Infinity) becomes ¥ (Yen Sign)
and ≈ (Almost Equal To) becomes » (Right-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark).
What is not so well known is that Unicode actually includes a fair number of genealogy symbols.
| meaning | symbol | Unicode code point(s) | name |
|---|---|---|---|
| male | ♂ | U+2642 | Male Sign |
| female | ♀ | U+2640 | Female Sign |
| intersex | ⚥ | U+26A4 | Interlocked Male and Female Sign |
| unknown | ⚪︎ | U+26AA | Medium White Circle |
| neuter | ⚲ | U+26B2 | Neuter |
| birth | * | U+002A | Asterisk |
| baptisation, christening | ~ | U+007E | Tilde |
| death | ✝︎ | U+271D | Latin Cross |
| burial | ⚰︎ | U+26B0 | Coffin |
| cremation | ⚱︎ | U+26B1 | Funeral Urn |
| stillborn | ✝︎* | U+0086 U+002A | Latin Cross, Asterisk |
| born illegitimately | *⃝ | U+002A U+20DD | Circled Asterisk |
| born illegitimately | ⊛ | U+229B | Circled Asterisk Operator |
| killed in action | ⚔︎ | U+2694 | Crossed Swords |
| this line extinct | ‡ | U+2021 | Double Dagger |
| approximate(ly) | ± | U+00B1 | Plus-Minus |
| before | < | U+003C | Less-Than Symbol |
| after | > | U+003E | Greater-Than Symbol |
| engaged | ⚬ | U+26AC | Medium Small White Circle |
| married | ⚭ | U+26AD | Marriage Symbol |
| divorced | ⚮ | U+26AE | Divorce Symbol |
| unmarried | ⚯ | U+26AF | Unmarried Partnership Symbol |
The introduction of Unicode ended the code page confusion by providing a single character set for all possible characters. Genealogy vendors have been remarkably slow to embrace Unicode, but today, all leading applications, such as PAF, RootsMagic, Heredis, Family Tree Maker, Reunion and MacFamilyTree are Unicode-based. The only users still suffering code page limitations and problems are those hanging on to a code-page application, most notably TMG or Legacy Family Tree.
Once you are using Unicode, you can use any character, sure in the knowledge that all characters will be understood just fine on any platform. You can use ∞ (Infinity), and know it will be always understood as ∞ (Infinity), and never as ¥ (Yen Sign). You have complete freedom to use any of the characters that the IBM PC, Apple MacRoman and Windows code pages offer - and more, much more.
All developers and most users know this by now.
What is not so well known is that Unicode actually includes a fair number of genealogy symbols.
Characters like the Asterisk (*, U+002A) and Tilde (~, U+007E) have of course been part of Unicode since its beginning.
Characters like the Latin Cross (✝︎, U+271D) and Double Dagger (‡, U+2021) has been part of Unicode since version 1.1 (June 1993).
The Male Sign (♂, U+2642), the Female Sign (♀, U+2640) and even the Interlocked Male and Female Sign (⚤, U+26A4) have all been part of Unicode since version 1.1,
and Unicode 5.0 (2006) added Neuter (⚲, U+26B2).
The tilde is used as the symbol for baptism because the wavy line resembles water ripples. Once you know that, you may find Almost Equal To (≈, U+2248) a better choice than Tilde (~, U+007E). I personally agree it looks better, but the mathematical characters do not merely have a shape, they have meaning to, and that meaning does not fit baptism.
Genealogy symbols added in Unicode 4.1 (2005-03-31) include Medium Small White Circle (⚬, U26AC), Marriage Symbol (⚭,U+26AD), Divorce Symbol (⚮, U+26AE) and Unmarried Partnership (⚯, U+26AF). Although its name does not suggest it, Medium Small White Circle was added as a genealogy symbol, namely the symbol for engagement.
Unicode 1.1 already included the Latin Cross (✝︎, U+271D), which is used to represent death. Unicode 4.1 added Coffin (⚰︎,U+26B0), Funeral Urn (⚱︎,U+26B1) and Crossed Swords (⚔︎, U+2694), to represent burial, cremation and killed in action.
The use of an Asterisk to represent birth is well-known. The use of Latin Cross followed by an Asterisk to represent stillbirth is not so well known. Unicode does not contain a separate character for that; if you want to use it, you'll simply have to us a Latin Cross followed by an Asterisk.
A little-known genealogy symbol, the Circled Asterisk, is used to represent an illegitimate birth. Unicode does not contain a separate character for that either, but it does not have to; Unicode includes both the Asterisk (*, U+002A) and Combining Enclosing Circle (◌⃝, U+20DD). The dotted circle in the previous sentence is a convention; a combining character cannot be shown on its own, it must be combined with another character, so they are commonly shown in combination with a Dotted Circle (U+25CC). Sadly, current browsers support for combining characters is still spotty, and the Circled Asterisk probably does not look like a circled asterisk, but like Asterisk followed by a Circle. so I reluctantly point out the existence of the Circled Asterisk Operator ( ⊛, U+229B). Technically, it is wrong to use it outside of mathematical formulas, but until browsers vendors fix their browsers to do the right thing, it's the best single-character substitute.
Having addressed these technicalities, I'll add that I personally do not endorse the use of a separate symbol for a so-called illegitimate birth.
The marital status of the parents should not be highlighted through a symbol on their children.
Information about the parents should be provided on the parents themselves.
More importantly, the symbol is associated with society judging children for their parents, and that is just not right.
I discommend the use of this symbol.
Many of the genealogical symbols are in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+02600..U+26FF). The same block includes gender symbols, that are not meant for genealogical use, but for gender studies. The Doubled Female Sign (⚢ , U2692) for example, is a gender symbol denoting lesbianism, and not a symbol indicating a lesbian marriage. The marriage symbol (⚭, U+26AD) is used for all marriages.
Added the Unicode variation selector U+FE0E to some characters to try and prevent Apple Safari from displaying some characters as emoji: Latin Cross (✝︎), Coffin (⚰︎), Funeral Urn (⚱︎), Medium White Circle (⚪︎), and Crossed Swords (⚔︎).
Renamed table entry from hermaphrodite
to intersex
.
Added the abbreviation x.
for intersex.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.