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genealogist

genealogist

7 7.6
A person who finds and records family history from old records
  • noun
  • /ˌdʒiːniˈɑːlədʒɪst/
: genealogista
  • One of them was a well-known professional genealogist and author, Kimberly Powell.
  • historians and genealogists

I spoke with Luxembourgian genealogists and Burmese archivists and I pissed a lot of people off in the process.

Examples

  • Every community has genealogists, many of whom are willing to share their materials with budding family history researchers.

    Academic text (2014)
  • Take this seal to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the court genealogist.

  • The Mother: I went to a genealogist once.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • But what is a genealogist?

  • Sometimes people wonder if there won't be a need for professional genealogists in the future.

    Blog text (7)
  • Recognizing the value of these materials, genealogists frequently use them in tracing family histories.

    Academic text (1993)
  • And even individual census records are made public 72 years after they're collected, to the delight of historians and genealogists.

    Academic text (2010)
  • Hubbard recalled how Goode, the genealogist, knew the older man's pedigree better than he did himself.

    Blog text (21)
  • An unlikely teaming of coroners and genealogists is working together to find the families of the unclaimed.

    Blog text (24)
  • A genealogist helped me trace my family's ancestry back to the 1800s.

Surface Forms

genealogist singular
genealogists plural

Morphology

genealogist = genealogy (transparent) = genealogy + ist

The meaning 'a person who studies genealogy' is directly and predictably formed from 'genealogy' + '-ist'.

Etymology

Genealogist comes from Greek parts: genea- meaning 'family' and -logist meaning 'one who studies', like a biologist who studies life. So a genealogist is someone who studies family history and traces where people in a family came from.