Do you have a Celebrekin?

Question

I found myself wondering how many of the (active) PM at Wikitree have kindred who rank as Notable (or a Celebrity). I myself don't see how that could be tabulated. Any such tabulation would change over time, in any case, as more profiles were entered and connections were made.

And if I wanted to find out for myself, without any app or index, I'd have to draw up a list of Notables, and then find my relationship with each one, individually? I have to suppose there's as many as 200 or 400 Notables because I don't actually know how many there are nor where I would look on the menus to discover how many there are .

How WOULD we go about finding out if we are kin to a Notable, other than the use of the Find, Relationships menu? Does anyone know if there is an Index of Notables? If I typed in a search box at Wikitree "notable" would that be effective? Which search box would I use? IS there more than one search box, another something I don't know.  Has anyone established a space, similar to a virtual cemetery, to "index" Notables? I have, for instance, an "index" of my kindred Category:Smith-157141. Has anyone established something similar for Category:Notables ?

Comments

with patience (I have little) and luck (I seem to have that) I found Notables List Project after three .. no, four, assaults on that page at WT recommended by Ros and George.  It has sections to it, it's alphabetized, and all the profiles "indexed" there are divvied into "needs a project marker", "profile needs improvement", and them what are connected to the Giant Human Tree ... all that info is on that page ... 

It does not look like there's 500 as yet ON THAT PAGE but I did not pause to count them one by one -- subsequent investigation of the page that lists with the Template reveals a large number of profiles (I did not count) and one lonely Notable Sticker 

Which Lists are valued of course but won't aid any individual PM in discovering if they are related unless they go through that "Find, Relationship" menu ... in short a leisure time project ... I don't think I'm that curious, now I look at it. Not at this moment, anyway. 

I can't think of any Improvements to this "collection" of lists that would make it more useful to the individual PM to find out if they have Celebrekin. 

As for C. Handy who is "well-born" and thus "well-connected" with Celebrekin, I say "Wow!!" 

---

Actually, the list of Notables can be found here:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Notables

At the moment, there are 26,651 Notables out there.

And I've tried several combinations of WikiTree Plus reports and haven't had any luck running a report that will pin down Notables in your tree. Ales may be able to recommend a query - I'll ask him directly.

---

Scott, I am STUNNED, thunder struck, by the whole idea of nearly 26.7k Notables ... why didn't they show up on the Notables tables "over there"? 

Ah, Susan, a Category is not the same thing as a sticker or a template, which are not the same things, either. Each is or has a different purpose or goal or both. 

I'm guessing the several hundreds of what appears to be Russian Notables is included in that 26.7k, followed any numbers of hundreds of others in other foreign languages. My Super Power is to recognize a Foreign Language when I see it in print. 

Well, I suppose a google search term such as "wikitree, Notables, Williams" might possibly produce a list of Notables with Williams in their name ?? Ah. Robin McLaurin Williams-6476. And David Rogerson Williams-32813. Gerhard Mennen Williams-28491. However, I'm not sure this is a productive approach for an individual PM testing to see if they have a Celebrekin with some particular surname or for that matter any Celebrekin. 

Agreed, if the profiles that lay out the paper trail from the individual PM to a Notable are not yet created, the odds do not favor locating that Celebrekin. That certainly applies if the Celeb (Notable) is "unconnected" to the Big Family Tree.  

All sorts of software could be created but if the paper trail (the profiles) are not in WT, then ... I begin to think one must in fact draw up a list of Notables one MIGHT be related to and then use the "Find, Relationship" menu ... or dig in this most recent site mentioned, this Category, and begin testing yourself against Notables with surnames that do appear in your own family lines ... 

 I really begin to question if even Ales and his crew could devise a search path since there has to be a paper trail in place to be searched, yes? 

---

LOL, Scott, I hope, when you say ".... Notables in your tree" you meant the generic PM tree, because if you do find a proven Notable in my ancestry, I shall be surprised beyond measure. 

---

I'm thinking the search would be a bit more straight forward than all that. For example, if starting at your profile, you could go back through your parents, grandparents, g-grandparents and all the way back and see if one "dings" for Notability, that would be search #1. Then you could possibly do the opposite. Pick an ancestor, and go down the tree through their children, grandchildren, and so on to see if one "dings". It doesn't loop in marriages, cousins, etc., but it's a fair start.

We'll see if Ales can identify a way to do that much.

---

Oh, and the table was created to give the team members some specific target Notables to work on - so it's a tiny subset of Notables that basically some of the team members have either requested those be created, or ones we've identified that need some work.

---

Ales had an interesting suggestion. For the ancestors, there's a WikiTree Plus query that allows you to create a list of ancestors going back xx generations. If you create a view of ancestors, and then do an internet browser "find" (I would say Ctrl-F, but that's very PC-ish... Apple Cmd-F, I suppose, would be the Mac way), then you can "find" the word "Notables" and it should tell you if any lie in your ancestral view.

Not sure on descendant view yet, but I have an idea that I'd have to try out first.

---

hmm, good luck with that, not every notable person is even tagged with the notable marker in any form, I find such once in a while in New France profiles.

---

Sigh, well, there's no perfect way to locate a Celebrekin one might have. And it's impossible to do so if the paper trails have not be created, which ought go without saying, but ... and now Danielle points out, rightly so, not every notable is tagged with a sticker or a template. 

Granted, not all the 26,000+ are "tagged". So one would need to first start laying their paper trail into the past as far as they were able to do so; they would need to expand that paper trail to include the siblings of parents, grand parents and great grand parents on back into the past, BECAUSE the Celebrekin might not be a direct line ancestor but instead a kin on a collateral line. 

Somewhere there's a list of Notables at Wikitree which has been also matched to biogs in Wikipedia (one main source of Notables) I am sure that IF the individual appears in Wikipedia they almost automatically qualifiy as a Notable at WT. Whether there are Notables listed at WT who are NOT also at Wikipedia is not clear to me. But as someone pointed out (I vaguely recall) there's Who's Who in America, for instance and other such august publications ... and one could cull a Notable from there? I don't recall the answer to that. 

There is the other option, to select a Notable at Wikitree (ignoring the fact there's a quantity who have not ended up in the 26k+ because they are not marked) and do a family list or do the descendants list and examine it for surnames you do recognize as being in your own family lines? 

It becomes clearer by the hour there is not easy peasy in this -- excepting for C Handy who is rolling in Celebrekin. 

---

Well - the 26,000+ are actually tagged, but speculation says that we might only have half of them tagged that actually qualify as Notables. So reality is there's probably at least 50,000 out there somewhere. And as Danielle mentioned, she finds them from time to time as she's hunting through profiles, probably more from encountering a profile where they have a Wikipedia page associated with them, and realizing that they could have a Notables template or sticker if someone would just add it.

But I would agree - I don't think there's any simple way of finding them other than either going on an all-out hunt or by doing as you suggest - select one and track down your relationship with them and determine if you're either blood related or very close related through marriage.

However, I believe I have found a way to locate Notables in your descendants, but it might take a little effort. If you create a Gedcom download, the Notables template does transfer into the Gedcom data. You can then "find" the word "Notables" in the Gedcom download and look at which profile it points to - and it should identify Notables in your line.

Hmm - I just realized I must be related somehow to the 12th Governor of Wyoming, William Bradford Ross. Guess this does work. The bad part is that I can't go too far back or the Gedcom gets too large to work with. But I guess I can break it up into pieces and look them over a piece at a time. This one alone says I have 193 hits on the word Notable. I don't think that's 193 Notables, but I suspect it could be as high as 100 profiles in there somewhere. Guess I should look when I'm not so tired...

---

Oh very funny... so the Gedcom pulled up all the Comments people have left on my page over the years, and most of them were people asking to join the Notables project or if someone's profile was considered Notable. In the end, there was only 1 Notable I was connected to from that Gedcom. Hilarious.

---

that is too funny Scott.

---

For sure, hole in one there Scott, 192 requests and 1 actual "by golly look I have a Celebrekin!! "

Answer 1

See if this is what you want:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Notables#Lists_of_Notables_on_WikiTree

Answer 2

There may be listings of notables... but seem to be rather buried on one of the pages for the  Notables Project. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Notables#Lists_of_Notables_on_WikiTree

I looked through numerous pages, but some of the pages entitled “List of ...” turn out to be misnomers.

On the basic search page there is not an option to search by project or category.

Answer 3

I would imagine that most people of colonial American and French-Canadian ancestry back to the 1600's have some "celebrity" or "notable" relatives. Just a few of the ones I'm aware of for myself (links go to relationship finder): Actress Betty Grable, Francis Scott Key, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harry Truman, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd (accused of conspiracy in the Lincoln assassination), Princess Margaret (same relationship to Queen Elizabeth II), geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan (as in "centimorgan"). There are lots of others, including a bunch I am probably not aware of.

Answer 4

Probably depends on what you mean as a Celebrekin? Since there are TONS of Notables out there, sometimes celebrating even the little guys is worthwhile. For example, I'm blood related to Humphrey Bogart (he's a reasonably near cousin as the bird flies). But I'm sure I'm further cousins from lots of others, mostly through marriage.

But finding them is a bit of a hit or miss thing - there's no flashing light on your tree display (for example) that says (NOTABLE), so you generally have to look at your tree and then check the profiles. There might be a way to use WikiTree+ to perform a search for Notables within a certain number of connection points to your profile. I can't use it at work (crazy tough internet restrictions), but I'll poke at it at home and see if I can figure out a search that might work. It's an interesting question.

Answer 5

I just fell over a web page I had no idea existed heretofore, an index of every surname at Wikitree.  

WikiTree A Family Name Index