Belgium: A Strategy to Identify your Ancestors

This article provides a possible strategy to find your ancestors within Belgium. If you want to create a more elaborate family tree, this strategy will be insufficient.

Identifying a person

The first name and surname is not sufficient to identify a person, but what is? The first name, surname, year of birth, birthplace, year of death, place of death or any such information for a certain relative, these are data point that can help identify a person. Even though there is no consensus for this, 4 of these data points is sufficient, in most cases. Although, some common sense is advised. For example:

• If the name is common and the place is a large city, then you should have an additional data point to be certain.
• Similarly, if you know the name is very particular, then 3 data points might suffice.
• The family name of the father is not a new data point.
• If you have an exact date, that can be consider as 2 data points instead of 1.

When, there is a data point that is conflicting, that does not mean there is no match. People can change their name, the age might be wrong by a couple of years, ... Although, you do need some additional data points to confirm this.