Honest AI ancestry
We built Your Family Tree with one rule: never invent your family history.
How it works
Large language models like the one powering Your Family Tree have read enormous amounts of public, historical, and linguistic information. That makes them genuinely useful for explaining where a surname comes from, what life was like in a particular era and region, and what records you should be hunting for.
But these models do not have access to private genealogy archives, government vital records, church registries, or DNA matches. So we never let the AI pretend it does.
What we do
- • Explain surname etymology, origin, and meaning
- • Describe historical migration patterns
- • Provide era and regional context for an ancestor
- • Suggest what records to search for
- • Recommend interview questions for living relatives
- • Store your hand-built family tree privately
What we don't do
- • Generate a family tree from just a name
- • Claim AI "found" specific ancestors
- • Look up SSNs or private personal records
- • Invent census matches, DNA results, or birth records
- • Tell you that you're descended from a famous person
Where to find real records
For verified genealogy data, these are the trusted starting points:
- FamilySearch — Free, run by the LDS Church. Largest free genealogy archive in the world.
- Ancestry — Paid. Excellent record matching and DNA testing.
- MyHeritage — Strong for European records.
- National Archives (US) — Census, military, immigration records.