My favorite feature at GENI is the relationship calculator. Often when I find a new Norwegian cousin via DNA, I can look them up at GENI and it will tell me how we are related. Plus a fun way to fritter away a few hours is to use the calculator to find out how you are related to various famous or historical figures. Norwegian records are good and thus many of us can trace back to early Nordic aristocracy which means we are related to all kinds of interesting people.
When I go to my 19th cousin 4 times removed George Washington’s profile, it shows me our relationship at the top. If I had not looked at the profile before then instead there would be a big blue button saying “How are you related” which I would have to click on to get GENI to find the relationship.
On George’s profile, if I click on the green button that says “Show 41 relatives” it will show me the names of all the ancestors on the path from me to George. Plus every name can be clicked to go to that person’s profile. Click the image below to see the names relating me to George over at GENI.
Here are a few more fun profiles you might be related to. Log in to GENI to see your own relationship when you click on their names or click on my relationship to see mine.
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America is my 20th cousin thrice removed!
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the USA is my 19th cousin twice removed!
Charlemagne is my 32nd great grandfather
Catherine II “the Great”, Empress of All Russia is my 10th cousin 7 times removed
Queen Elizabeth II is my 15th cousin once removed
Virginia Woolf is my 23rd cousin once removed.
Marilyn Monroe is my 23rd cousin five times removed!
Sometimes you are related only by marriage
Albert Abraham Einstein, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1921 is my fourth great aunt’s great uncle’s wife’s great nephew’s wife’s first cousin
Sometimes the relationship is pretty fanciful
Constantine / Константин Monomachos / Мономах, IX, Byzantine Emperor is my 26th great grandfather
Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni is my 49th great grandmother
Attila “Scourge of God”, 59th King of the Huns is my 45th great grandfather
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, Queen of Egypt is my 61st great grandmother.
Darius I ‘the Great’, King of Persia is my 77th great grandfather
Priam, King of Troy is my 75th great grandfather
Another trick is that you can click the little push pin on the right side to see relationships on other pages in terms of that person instead of yourself.
As you can see, I had lots of fun preparing this blog post!
I forgot to mention in my post that GENI is a membership site but the free account is adequate for most things. Once you enter a few generations you link into their world tree which is what makes the calculator work.
Also GENI is a collaborative family tree so perhaps read my article comparing the one world trees http://blog.kittycooper.com/2014/06/the-advantages-of-working-with-a-one-world-tree/
Glad you had fun with this! I think the relationship finder is definitely the tool we all get the most fun out of. 🙂 And yes, the fanciful ones are there — I like that description, by the way — but we all have this really cool ability to simply not look at that part of the tree if we don’t want to. I wish more critics grasped that. 😉
I have a friend who goes through all the Mayflower profiles occasionally and runs paths, trying to see if she’s getting any closer to having hints of descent from someone so she can then do the formal documentation. On one hand, that’s really lazy. On the other hand…it’s also kinda brilliant!
Kitty, Wikitree has had this feature for a long time and is also a “sponsor” of the Global Family Reunion http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Global_Family_Reunion. It’s a fun project!
Doris
I don’t know when WikiTree opened, but I joined Geni when it first opened in 2007 and I don’t remember ever not having the “How am I related?” button. I think it’s great that multiple sites — I think FamilySearch now as well? — are using the idea. It will make it so much easier for people all over to find connections to research and confirm.
In my experience, Geni tends to find much closer connections between people simply because its profile count is too high for anyone to catch up. At the same time, I did once find one path on WikiTree that wasn’t on Geni yet, so I did the research to confirm it, then added it to the World Family Tree (Geni).
So I think that there’s benefit for us consumers in trying out multiple sites and comparing results. The more info that’s out there, the better!
Doris, I love wikitree too but it does not yet have as extensive a database as GENI so does not find the relationships mentioned in my post. Plus you have to click a button to get the relationship and it is just not as pretty