Best historical dynasty family tree/genalogy program?
May 26, 2022 9:03 AM Subscribe
The applications I've used so far assume a modern, Western, nuclear family. I need something that can handle Pre-Columbian political dynasties.
I'm attempting to build a dynasty chart for the ruling dynasty of Tenochtitlan. So far I've toyed around with Family Tree Maker, Gramps, and FamilyEcho. They all have various levels of usefulness, but are more optimized for documenting where great-grandpa got baptized than for charting inter-dynastic ties. I was wondering if there was either a program more geared towards dynastic charts or some ways to customize modern family tree apps to make them better at the particularities of the culture I'm diagramming.
Some major particularities include:
- Long polysyllabic and multipart names without surnames. Most programs assume an individual's name with be "Smith, Joseph," not "Tezcatlan Miyahuatzin" or "Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina Chalchiuhtlatonac."
- Rampant polygyny and children with a named father but unnamed mother. Each elite man might have dozens of political marriages with unnamed women, a handful of named wives, and sometimes one or more "primary" wives. The father of children from these unions is always identified, but the mother often goes unmentioned.
- So much cousin marriage. Although so far this hasn't been that much of a problem.
Again, all the programs I've explored so far handle these problems with varying success, but often require kludges or workarounds. If there's something more designed for this kind of work, I'd be happy to hear about it.
Since I'm primarily building this chart as a reference, there's also certain data that would be helpful to be displayed (rather than having to click though to sub-menus/profiles/etc.). My ideal programs would show the following information for quick reference:
- Name
- Birth date and death date
- City of origin
- Religious/Political title
- Years of reign
And also include a way to easily cite references (which do not need to be displayed, but can be tucked in the profile). Gramps and FTM do this well, with the ability to add references which can then be easily selected from a drop-down list. FamilyEcho is more tedious, requiring each reference to be typed out.
Here's to hoping such a special snowflake program exists!
I'm attempting to build a dynasty chart for the ruling dynasty of Tenochtitlan. So far I've toyed around with Family Tree Maker, Gramps, and FamilyEcho. They all have various levels of usefulness, but are more optimized for documenting where great-grandpa got baptized than for charting inter-dynastic ties. I was wondering if there was either a program more geared towards dynastic charts or some ways to customize modern family tree apps to make them better at the particularities of the culture I'm diagramming.
Some major particularities include:
- Long polysyllabic and multipart names without surnames. Most programs assume an individual's name with be "Smith, Joseph," not "Tezcatlan Miyahuatzin" or "Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina Chalchiuhtlatonac."
- Rampant polygyny and children with a named father but unnamed mother. Each elite man might have dozens of political marriages with unnamed women, a handful of named wives, and sometimes one or more "primary" wives. The father of children from these unions is always identified, but the mother often goes unmentioned.
- So much cousin marriage. Although so far this hasn't been that much of a problem.
Again, all the programs I've explored so far handle these problems with varying success, but often require kludges or workarounds. If there's something more designed for this kind of work, I'd be happy to hear about it.
Since I'm primarily building this chart as a reference, there's also certain data that would be helpful to be displayed (rather than having to click though to sub-menus/profiles/etc.). My ideal programs would show the following information for quick reference:
- Name
- Birth date and death date
- City of origin
- Religious/Political title
- Years of reign
And also include a way to easily cite references (which do not need to be displayed, but can be tucked in the profile). Gramps and FTM do this well, with the ability to add references which can then be easily selected from a drop-down list. FamilyEcho is more tedious, requiring each reference to be typed out.
Here's to hoping such a special snowflake program exists!
Also, once you *had* defined a sufficient set of relations, you could share the program independent of the data.
posted by clew at 10:57 AM on May 26, 2022
posted by clew at 10:57 AM on May 26, 2022
Response by poster: Have you considered a general graphing program or library
It is something I have considered, but it presents the converse problem of using extant program. Put a lot of effort up front to build a custom database vs. put the effort on backend to customize an existing program.
I'm hoping for a lazy middle ground.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:28 AM on May 26, 2022
It is something I have considered, but it presents the converse problem of using extant program. Put a lot of effort up front to build a custom database vs. put the effort on backend to customize an existing program.
I'm hoping for a lazy middle ground.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:28 AM on May 26, 2022
Graphviz is a general purpose graph (in the math sense of "a set of nodes and edges") drawing utility. It's super-rich, and hence could take the rest of your life to exhaust all the possibilities.
BUT, if you wanted to do something like a family tree that would have flexibility to tweak it as you want, and add info, and have catalogs of examples to steal from, you could do worse.
LaTeX is another possibility, but to your point, either way you probably want to write a little script/program to generate the references from some sort of spreadsheet or database, rather than doing it by hand.
Or corkboard, index cards, and thread. Old school TV detective style.
posted by adekllny at 7:45 PM on May 26, 2022
BUT, if you wanted to do something like a family tree that would have flexibility to tweak it as you want, and add info, and have catalogs of examples to steal from, you could do worse.
LaTeX is another possibility, but to your point, either way you probably want to write a little script/program to generate the references from some sort of spreadsheet or database, rather than doing it by hand.
Or corkboard, index cards, and thread. Old school TV detective style.
posted by adekllny at 7:45 PM on May 26, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
When not adding relations, data entry would be into a Excel file or text file, it’s not a commitment to all programming all the time.
posted by clew at 10:56 AM on May 26, 2022