Talk:Ahnentafel

Nonsense Example
The numbers assigned to the ancestors of HRH Prince William of Wales in the example are not Anhentafel numbers. They are merely a list by generation.

In a "real-life" Anhenetafel, HRH Prince William of Wales is 1, HRH The Prince Charles, Prince of Wales is 2, Diana Spencer is 3, etc.; all men, excluding de cujus (or the proband, whichever term you prefer) who is 1, are assigned even numbers and all women are assigned odd numbers.

This article would greatly benefit from an Anhentafel chart similar to the one on French Wikipédia article, as well. Charvex (talk) 04:37, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Mathematical notation
Using an asterisk for ordinary multiplication is a practice invented for use in limited character sets when the letter x must not be so used. Its use when one is not so limited is horribly crude. Consequently I've changed this
 * 56*2+1=113
 * 56*2+1=113

to this:
 * 56&times;2 + 1 = 113
 * 56&times;2 + 1 = 113

Notice that I also used proper spacing.

I also found this in the article:
 * 29-1=28/2=14
 * 29-1=28/2=14

and changed it to this: Several issues are involved:
 * 29 &minus; 1 = 28 and 28/2 = 14
 * 29 &minus; 1 = 28 and 28/2 = 14
 * A stubby little hyphen is not a minus sign;
 * Proper spacing;
 * 29 &minus; 1 is not equal to 28/2. Rather, 29 &minus; 1 is equal to 28.  The latter is what must have been intended, but the usage conflicts with standard use of mathematical notation.

The style issues above are codified in Manual of Style (mathematics). (The last bullet point is not a typographical style issue.) Michael Hardy (talk) 12:24, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

"Calculation of the generation number"
"log2() -> The result needs to be rounded down to a full integer (trucate decimal digits) = generation number"

Should this be visible to the readers?69.224.190.220 (talk) 10:48, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Autonumbering
Whoever put in the chart for Prince William needs to renumber it manually. He appears to have used the Word autonumbering "feature." If you copy and paste the table, the numbers disappear, and the numbers are the whole point. I would do it, except it's a big job and a tricky one, since the manual numbers have to go at the beginning of each line, where there's a link, and since the numbers will shift during the process. I'll check back in a few days and see if this has been corrected, and if not, I'll post a warning. I *might* be able to do a few at a time, but frankly I think the original author is the right person for the job. Dee Fraser 06:52, 25 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dee Fraser (talk • contribs)

Totally wrong number for Peter
The rule is that when an ancestor appears twice (or more) in a pedigree chart only the lowest number is carried forward. The Electress Sophia has the ahnentafel number 3113 on Peter Philips's chart. The mistake made in the article is that the ancestry was taken through Elizabeth II and not, as it should have been, Prince Philip. Sophia is Peter's mother's father's father's father's father's mother's father's mother's father's father's mother. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chuckw-nj (talk • contribs) 03:13, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Example
This is a section that someone might want to copy and paste into a separate document, during which action automatic numbers are lost. Automatic numbers make the numbering vulnerable to typos and editorial errors online, and the numbering of ancestors is the key concept to the list. It is also a section that someone, having copied and pasted it, might want to format as a table.

I've replaced the automatic numbers in this section manually. However, I'm unhappy with the resulting spacing. The only way to put each entry on a separate line was to make it a separate paragraph. Is there a way to change the paragraph led settings? In Word, I would make the first paragraph 0 pts after, the last paragraph 0 pts before, and paragraphs 2–126 0 pts before and after.

Another formatting change I would like to make, but didn't yet, is to the date format. While they are presented in the proper running text format (0 Month 0000), this format is clunky in ranges and completely useless as a sort value in a table. It would not be inconsistent in just this section to render them in the terser form 1884Nov15–1965Apr05 (yyyymmmddyyyymmmdd).

I would put this list in table format if I knew how to do that on Wikipedia. In Word, I put an ahnentafel into five columns (number, given name, family name, birth date, death date); three would suffice here (number, name, date range). Sortable columns are useful when analyzing data.

Dee Fraser 22:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dee Fraser (talk • contribs)

“Modern Families”
How do things like adoption, gay-marriage, sperm-banks, single-parents, etc. play into this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Synetech (talk • contribs) 19:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

No one springs from their parent's head like Zeus from Athena, so I don't understand the single parent issue. Indeed, this is a notion of genetic ancestry, so things like divorce and parentage from non-married parents (or even sperm/egg banks) aren't issues either. Obviously, you might not know a genetic ancestor, but that could be for a host of reasons. Now legal parentage might be different from genetic due to adoption or these other factors you mention (which can be thought of similarly to adoption in a legal sense), but then you could just do a legal rather than genetic ancestry. That isn't a new issue. Adoption was important in the Roman world for example. (29 May 2014).

Actually it was Athena who was born from Zeus's head...and who would be so presumptuous as to have a similar ambition? Deipnosophista (talk) 20:17, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Ahnentafel is not pedigree chart
I've deleted the statement "In German, Ahnentafel can also mean a pedigree chart." Pedigree chart is Stammbaum. Many people mixup those words using Stammbaum instead of Ahnentafel, but never vice versa. --188.101.235.227 (talk) 16:50, 2 May 2014 (UTC) (native German)

"de cujus"
I am bothered by whether this term (appearing in the legend to the illustration) is correctly used here: I am not convinced that it is a genuine English expression which deserves use in the Encyclopedia. It appears neither in Chambers nor the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and a websearch shows few and conflicting explanations. Wiktionary asserts that it is French, not English. Literally, the Latin translates as "concerning whose", which is not illuminating since it clearly requires some other word to be supplied. I would favour its deletion: this would not harm the sense. Deipnosophista (talk) 10:59, 13 November 2016 (UTC)