Genealogy
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40 free Genealogy trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Genealogy turns history into something personal. A name on a census sheet, a ship's passenger list or a faded parish register stops being a statistic the moment it belongs to your own family, and the hunt for one more generation back has become a hobby for millions of people. This quiz covers the ground a family historian actually walks: how cousins are counted, what the old words on certificates and headstones meant, where surnames come from, which records survive and which were lost, and what a DNA test can and cannot tell you. There are famous family trees too, from royal dynasties to presidents and a film star with a surprising relative. It is written for society meetings, family reunions and anyone who has ever lost an evening to an ancestry website. Beginners will find plenty they can reason out, and seasoned researchers will meet a few of the tools and terms of the trade. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing a little more than when you started.
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Q 01The word pedigree comes from an old French phrase for the foot of which bird, echoing a chart's branching lines?
Crane
Crane is the bird in pé de grue, the Anglo-Norman phrase that English speakers wore down into pedigree. The forked lines joining parents and children are said to resemble its splayed toes.
Q 02Which conqueror's male-line DNA is carried by about 16 million men across Asia, a 2003 genetic study suggested?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was the study's suggested founder of a lineage found in about 8% of men from northeast China to Uzbekistan. Later ancient-DNA research has cast doubt on the link.
Q 03Which Oscar-winning actor is a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln through the family of the president's mother, Nancy?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks descends from the same family as Nancy Hanks, the mother of the sixteenth president. The actor is also a distant relative of children's television host Fred Rogers, whom he played on screen.
Q 04Which English king's skeleton, dug up beneath a Leicester car park in 2012, was confirmed by DNA from living relatives?
Richard III
Richard III was confirmed when mitochondrial DNA from the bones matched two descendants of his sister Anne of York, 17 and 19 generations on. He was the last English king to die in battle.
Q 05Which naturalist married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood and feared inbreeding had harmed their children's health?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin and Emma were both grandchildren of the potter Josiah Wedgwood. The couple had ten children, and whenever one fell ill he worried that the close family tie was to blame.
Q 06In which Nordic country do most people carry a patronymic such as Jónsdóttir in place of a fixed family surname?
Iceland
Iceland gives most children a last name built from a parent's first name plus -son or -dóttir, so it changes with every generation. Even the telephone directory is alphabetised by first name.
Q 07What badly damaged the 1890 US census records in Washington in 1921, leading to a gap that frustrates family historians?
A fire
A fire in the Commerce Department building in January 1921 left the 1890 schedules scorched and soaked. Officials later approved the damaged remainder for disposal, so almost nothing survives.
Q 08Which California murder case was solved in 2018 after detectives uploaded crime-scene DNA to the site GEDmatch?
Golden State Killer
Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo was traced through distant relatives on the site who shared an ancestor from the 1800s. He was 72 when he was charged with eight murders.
Q 09Which 1976 Alex Haley bestseller about his ancestor Kunta Kinte set off an American boom in family history research?
Roots
Roots spent 22 weeks at number one on the New York Times list, and its 1977 television adaptation set off a rush to trace family trees. Haley was later sued for plagiarism over parts of the text.
Q 10Which immigration station in New York Harbor processed about 12 million arrivals between 1892 and 1954?
Ellis Island
Ellis Island's first arrival was Annie Moore, a 17-year-old from Cork, on 1 January 1892. Officials there worked from the steamship lists, so the tale that they changed surnames is a myth.
Q 11The DNA testing company 23andMe takes its name from the 23 pairs of what in a human cell?
Chromosomes
Chromosomes come in 23 pairs, one set from each parent, which is why a saliva sample can point to relatives on both sides of a family. Scientists miscounted the human total as 48 until 1956.
Q 12Which surname ranked first in the 2010 US census, shared by more than two million Americans?
Smith
Smith comes from the Old English word for someone who works in metal, and it was already recorded as a surname by about 975. It is also the most common surname in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Q 13Which word marks a cousin from a different generation than yours, such as the child of your first cousin?
Removed
Q 21A 1998 DNA study tied a descendant of Sally Hemings's youngest son to the male line of which US president?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was represented in the test by descendants of his paternal uncle Field, whose Y-DNA matched that of a descendant of Eston Hemings. Most historians have since accepted his paternity.
Q 22Which British prime minister came from the same aristocratic Spencer family as Princess Diana?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was born a Spencer-Churchill, the senior branch that holds the dukedom of Marlborough. Diana came from the junior branch, the Spencers of Althorp.
Q 23Which survey of England, made for William the Conqueror, recorded who held every manor and what it was worth?
Removed counts the generations between two cousins: once for a parent's cousin or a cousin's child, twice when two generations lie between them. Cousins of the same generation take only a number.
Q 14Two people are second cousins when the closest ancestors they have in common are which relatives?
Great-grandparents
Great-grandparents are the shared link, which makes second cousins the grandchildren of two siblings. First cousins meet one generation lower, and each further degree climbs one generation higher.
Q 15Which disease did doctors mean when an old death certificate gave the cause as consumption?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis earned the name consumption because the illness seemed to consume its victims as they wasted away. In the 1800s it caused an estimated quarter of all deaths in Europe.
Q 16Which calendar did Britain and its American colonies adopt in 1752, skipping eleven days of September?
Gregorian
Gregorian dating replaced the Julian calendar, so records from before the switch are labelled Old Style. George Washington was born on 11 February by the old count and 22 February by the new.
Q 17Which trade did an ancestor follow if an old census listed his occupation as cooper?
Barrel maker
Barrel maker is the meaning: coopers bent heated wooden staves into casks, tubs and buckets. The word goes back to cupa, a Latin word for a barrel.
Q 18Which French word is printed before a married woman's maiden name in records and obituaries?
Née
Née is the feminine form of the French for born, so a record reading Mary Jones née Clark is giving her surname at birth. Né is the rarer masculine form.
Q 19Queen Elizabeth II and her husband were third cousins through their shared descent from which earlier British monarch?
Victoria
Victoria was an ancestor of both: Elizabeth descended from her eldest son, Edward VII, and her husband from her daughter Alice. So many of her descendants wore crowns that she was nicknamed the grandmother of Europe.
Q 20Which US president gave away his niece Eleanor at her 1905 wedding to her distant cousin Franklin?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt stood in for his late brother, the bride's father, and the date was picked because he would be in New York for the St Patrick's Day parade. Eleanor did not even have to change her surname.
Domesday Book
Domesday Book got its name because its record of who held which land was as final as the Last Judgement. Doom was then simply the Old English word for a law or ruling.
Q 24Which church operates FamilySearch, a free website holding billions of digitised family history records?
Latter-day Saints
Latter-day Saints gather records partly so that religious ordinances can be performed for relatives who have died. The effort began in 1894 as the Genealogical Society of Utah.
Q 25Members of a lineage society founded at Plymouth in 1897 must document descent from a passenger on which ship?
Mayflower
Mayflower passengers numbered 102 when the ship reached America in 1620, and the society records the family lines that descend from them. Its first chapter was formed in New York City in 1894.
Q 26Which Gospel opens with a genealogy that runs forward from Abraham to Jesus?
Matthew
Matthew starts with Abraham and works forward, while the only other Gospel family tree runs backwards from Jesus to Adam. The two lists even disagree on the name of Joseph's father.
Q 27Which European dynasty's jutting jaw has been linked to generations of marriages between close relatives?
Habsburg
Habsburg rulers married within the family so often, for political advantage, that the dynasty was almost unmatched in its inbreeding. The long chin can be followed through their portraits.
Q 28In which country's traditional naming custom does a child take two surnames, the father's first and then the mother's?
Spain
Spain's custom also means women keep their own surnames at marriage, a gift to anyone tracing a maternal line. Since 1999 parents may choose the order, but nearly all put the father's first.
Q 29Which broadcaster launched, in 2004, the celebrity ancestry series Who Do You Think You Are?
BBC
BBC viewers made the first series the highest-rated programme on BBC Two that year. NBC launched an American version in 2010, with Lisa Kudrow as an executive producer.
Q 30Which scholar began hosting a PBS ancestry series in 2012 in which celebrity guests receive a book of life?
Henry Louis Gates
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a Harvard literary critic and historian who often uses his own family tree as an example on screen. Professional genealogists compile each guest's book.