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How to Complete a Family Tree Template

The proper way to input information on a family tree.

Filling out the names in your family tree template:

First you would record the first name, then their other names, and finally the surname. Surnames must be capitalized, and this means it would be displayed as such: John Lyon Smith. Married women will always have their maiden name listed, but if you do not know their maiden name, you should write “unknown”. In order to indicate unknown, you would write the following: Mary Wright//. The // indicates that the maiden name is unknown.

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If there are nicknames involved, then the nickname should be shown in quotes. For example, Jacob “Jac” SMITH. If someone has been adopted or undergone a legal name changed, then they should have the original name in brackets, and then a.k.a followed by their new name.

If you find a surname that appears to be spelled incorrectly, do not correct it. Illiteracy was rampant in ages past, and this may have caused the name to be recorded wrong. In any case, you should make sure you write down the different variations.

In some cases, surnames were deliberately changed for political or social reasons, possibly when immigrating to a new country. If you know the original spelling, record that version first, followed by the later version(s) used.

Entering dates in a family tree form:

To enter dates properly, you would use the European standard. For instance you would record the day first, the month, and then the year(dd Mmm yyyy). Yes, the first letter of the month is a capital, so you would enter your dates as such: 12 Apr 1978.

If you don’t know the exact date, then you would place a prefix such as: abt which means: about. Another word you can use is ‘circa’ which means ‘around’. Use these when you want to use an approximate date rather than an exact one.

If you don’t know the exact date but can establish a range of dates between which the event occurred, then use the abbreviation bet. (short for “between”), with a hyphen between the two dates. E.g. bet. 22 Jan 1950 – 26 Feb 1950.

You might run into a case where the date is only represented in numerals. If you find this to be the case, then you should know that in North America, the month is shown first, and the number corresponds to the month’s position in the calendar. If you are looking at a European chart, then the day would be shown first.

Geographical data and abbreviations

When you are recording a location, make sure that you do so with accuracy. You would want to start from the smaller area, then the larger one. In other words, if you are trying to represent the United Kingdom, you would show exactly where the person came from in the United Kingdom. For instance: London, England, United Kingdom. Other information to include would be when they were born and when they died.

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