One of the most prominent figures in U.S. politics died from brain cancer in his Hyannis Port (MA) home on Tuesday, August 26. He was 77 years old.  Edward Moore Kennedy (born 1932) was the ninth and youngest child of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Below is a cut-out from the Kennedy family tree (click on the image to enlarge it).

The Kennedy family became very influential in U.S. politics during the 2oth century. Ted Kennedy’s father was the grandson of an Irish immigrant, and served as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The height of the family’s political influence had probably been reached when John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the second oldest of the 9 siblings, became the 35th President of the United States in 1960.  Triumph and tragedy were never far from one another in the Kennedy family: John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Robert (who served as attorney general and later as senator) were both killed by assassins, and Ted Kennedy himself survived a plane crash in 1964, which caused permanent problems in back and neck. Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver (born as the 5th child), who founded the Special Olympics, had just died two weeks before Edward Kennedy.

The story of the Kennedy family tree is truly remarkable.

The theory that the modern form of men, Homo Sapiens, evolved in Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, is scientifically accepted and based on solid evidence. One branch of the common (very large!) family tree left Africa around 60,000 years ago and spread over what today is Europe and Asia.

But who would have thought that Britain’s most popular TV-chef, Jamie Oliver, has Sudanese ancestors – only 6 generations back! Oliver claims that there might indeed be some optical hints in his family, and also says that the picture of himself on the cover of his book “The Naked Chef” is quite revealing.

He now would like to participate in the BBC’s genealogy program “Who Do You Think You Are?” to find out more about his African heritage.

We came across this neat website, which you can use to create a tag cloud from a website of your choice. Such a cloud visualizes the words that are most commonly used on the site by displaying them in according sizes. See the current tag cloud for the dynastree blog below:

This week’s poll deals with dynastree’s design: we would like to know what you think about it – is it your thing, or would you prefer something different? What can we improve, what should be changed, or left as it is?
When dynastree started, we chose a more playful, comic-like style, and we’d now like to re-evaluate our design – based on what you, our users, think.

When dynastree.com launched a Turkish version in early July, an unexpected challenge regarding the localization and the difficulties Turkish genealogists are facing came up: surnames have only been invented (literally) very recently in Turkey. While surnames have been a natural part of life in Europe, North America, and Latin America for ages, things are different in Turkey.

Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, brought surnames to Turkey in his far-reaching attempt to modernize (meaning westernize) the country. In 1934, a law requiring Turks to acquire surnames following the European model was passed.

So how did people distinguish themselves prior to this important cesura? Instead of surnames, they appended their religious, family-related, or professional title to their first names. Furthermore, they could be called following their informal titles, which effectively meant that only “Sir” or “Madam” was appended to the first name. Examples would be “Vezir.i Azam”, (meaning “Grand Vizier Azam”), and simply “Ahmet Bey” (“Bey” meaning “Sir”).

If a person had a formal title, indicating his political, religious, or military status or rank, this title was also used in civilian life. Thus, a “Pasha” (the highest rank of civil servants or military officers) would never become a “Bey”. This lead to a cleavage in society and created a chaos during magisterial registrations, e.g. for military service, not to mention the local residents’ registration office.

Today, most Turkish family names are easily understandable, as the majority was created from the standard vocabulary. Surnames created from words suggesting a masculine and martial virtue were especially popular, such as:

• Ateş: fire, zeal
• Çelik: steel
• Çetin : hard
• Coşkun: fiery, vigorous

Another popular category for choosing a surname was adapting the name of a historic figure, or a mythological hero:

• Arslan (Alp Arslan was Sultan of the Grand-Seljuks)
• Cengiz (Ghengis Kahn)

The example of surnames in Turkey shows the importance of considering cultural peculiarities when localizing a product or a service for a single country, as dynastree’s Country Manager for Turkey, Pinar Gazel, confirms: “We are striving for meeting the needs of Turkish genealogists, and have thus tried to consider such things during the localization of acrabaonline.com”.

We asked for your input regarding new features and functions two weeks ago, and received tremendous feedback within a week. More than 100 suggestions were made, we have been discussing and prioritizing it, and here’s the result!

Category #1 stands for those functions that we’d like to implement as soon as possible. Category #2 means that we are also going to add them, but probably a little later, as we kind of put them in line with everything else we’re working on right now.

The list also shows which functions are going to be included in our premium subscription. We hope that you find a lot of what you suggested on the list, we’ll get to work right away!

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Did you ever wonder if someone you know has created a family page on dynastree? We indexed all family pages that can be accessed publicly, you can now search them! To do so, click on the link in the footer (at the very bottom of the page), or click here.

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

You can limit the search results by selecting a single language version in which the page you are searching for was created, which helps if you are searching for a very common, widely spread name

Did you ever wonder what to do when you would find a relative with whom you would like to work on a common tree, but both of you already have trees you would not want to give up? For such cases, we created the possibility to merge two family trees. Below is an example of what happens when you try to invite someone who’s email address is already registered because he/or she has created an account at dynastree as well:

The relationship between you and that person will be shown below this warning. Clicking the link (“here”) will iniate the merging process, the other person is notified and will have to agree.

Note how the different information of the two profiles is shown here (only one profile existed in the tree on the right in this example). You can add a personal message below before you send the invitation. The other person will see the image below when he or she is informed about the request to merge the family trees by us.

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

If the data in the profile(s) that is/are to be merged (i.e. one profile replaces the other and is hence displayed in the common tree) differs, both of you will be shown a temporary version of your family tree after logging in. Here, all “conflicts” will be shown, and each of you has to take a look at the single profiles and decide which one will replace the other one. In any case, the other person has to agree to the changes proposed by the first person who chooses the “dominant” profile. All profiles with “conflicts” will be indicated by small question marks on the respective profile card, and later construction site symbols (as soon as someone has suggested which profile is to replace the other one). You can also show a list of all unresolved “conflicts” (there’s only one here since there’s only one profile to be merged):

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

After resolving all those “conflicts”, your family trees will have been merged, and you can work together to expand your new common tree, and exchange information the others might not have had access to!

This week’s poll asks how much money your are spending on your hobby of genealogy – or if you’d be willing to spend money on it at all, given that there’s an attractive product. Remember: you can test our premium subscription for free now!

Some of you requested a new contact category, and we now proudly present it: the Twitter feed in your profile! You can now choose Twitter in your “Contact” section in your profile, and display the 3 newest Twitter feeds! How cool is that? Just enter the Twitter name you would like to send the feed to, as shown below:

The newest feeds will then be shown in your profile’s sidebar!

Have a nice weekend folks!