The common derivation from the Latin genus (birth) of words like gens, which for the Romans showed the ensemble of the families coming directly from one ancestor, or words like our parents, who generates, or gene, the little particle that gives us the hereditary characteristics, but also generation in his double sense of procreation and of all the people who were born from the same parents, takes us to show the genealogy (coming from the ancient Greek γεννά, issue, and λογος, science) like that science that studies the origins and development of a family not only in the time, but also in a determined social and cultural context.

In the past the word family indicated a juridical, social and political entity very complex and articulate, which included a clan of people organized in heads of family, sons, grandsons, and cousins, but also servants who in many documents were indicated as famigli. For us, actually the family is a more reduced group, composed by the two parents and one or two sons, and always and often moves on the idea of  mononuclear family, but for a genealogical research we must consider all the people who were generated by a common ancestor, called founder, and the search can be done both for the paternal line and for the maternal one.

The graphic representation of all this is the so - called genealogical tree, a tracing of vertical (trunk) and horizontal lines (branch) where are located the different generations: parents, sons, grandsons, great-grandsons etc. Below the name of every member of the family are indicated the place and the day of birth and death, the name of the consort and place and day of marriage. If a person married more then one time, the other marriages will be indicated by a number or by an alphabetic letter, the same to differentiate the children born from different marriages.

But why is important doing a so - detailed  analysis of your own race?

Many people, most of all the descendents of those who emigrated in the centuries XIX and XX centuries, need to know which were the places of origin of their ancestors, their jobs and the social context where they lived, to discover their origins. The researches, all done on ancient documents and in the places of origin, often carry to have interesting historical and genealogical discoveries, making in clear unknown connections, other times can be found the explanation of a name or of a nickname, but also the reasons of a transfer or the choice of a place of residence for an offspring, or understand the complex relations which connected the families or the reasons of ancient rivalries .

Considered in these terms the reconstruction of the story and of the genealogy of a family is a way to know our own roots, the rebuilding of which is possible only through the passionate analysis of documents that can be found in civil or parish archives and not the obstinate research of ancient coats of arms.