Making your own kinship chart

Part One:
What is a kinship diagram?Kinship diagrams, also called kinship charts are commonly used by anthropologists to quickly draw out relationships as they interview people and to present a culture’s kinship pattern without showing specific names.
Kinship diagram symbolsBefore you get started, you’ll need to know the language of kinship diagrams. All kinship charts use the same basic symbols, shown below, to present individuals and social organizations visually.
People
Use a circle for a female.Use a triangle for a male.Use a square for someone who identifies as neither sex or both sexes.Place a line through the appropriate symbol if the individual is deceased.Marriage and cohabitation
Use an equal sign between two individuals to indicate a marriage.Use an approximately equal sign (≈) to indicate a cohabiting couple who are not married.Use a similar sign ( ̴) to symbolize parents who are neither cohabiting or married.Use a not equal sign (≠) if a marriage ended in divorce.If the individual has been married twice, use equal signs on both sides of the symbol, with the first spouse on the left.If the individual has been married more than twice, draw lines connecting the spouses below the symbols.Descent
Use a solid line, straight down from the marriage or cohabitation symbol, to indicate biological descent.Use a dotted line to indicate adoptive descent.If you don’t know the parents of an individual, indicate common descent between brothers and sisters by drawing a bar above the symbols.—Kinship Chart Software
You can use this kinship chart software, if you want to: Lucidchart (Links to an external site.). Just click on the image of the chart to begin modifying it with your own content.
However, you do not have to use this software – you can use your own paper and draw out the relations by hand.
Either way, follow the directions below.
How to make a kinship diagram1. Get a piece of paper and turn it horizontally.
2. Add Ego to the center of your page.
In this kinship chart, you are Ego. Ego (you) is the starting point of your diagram. Not all charts have an “Ego” – if they do not, then you read them from the top down. If they do, then you always read everyone on the chart in relationship to Ego. Most kinship diagrams use a different color or style to highlight Ego. For example, in the template above, Ego is the only symbol filled in with color.
3. Using the kinship chart symbols described above, add Ego’s kin.
Add in Ego’s (your) parents and everyone in Ego’s parents generation (your aunts and uncles and their spouses).
Add in Ego’s grand parents and everyone in their generation (grandparent’s siblings).
Add in everyone in Ego’s generation (siblings and cousins, even second cousins).
Add in everyone in the generation below Ego’s (Ego’s children, Ego’s nieces and nephews, Ego’s cousin’s children, Ego’s second cousins once removed).
Refer to the chart below to see naming relationships in American kinship to help you.

For the kinship chart I honestly do not care for it to be my exact family, it just has to be a big family from both my father and mothers side. They have 11 siblings combined, and my grandparents have 17 siblings combined
Part Two: Purpose: To apply the concepts that are discussed in the video lecture.
Assignment: See video lecture in previous page for detailed instructions for this worksheet: Video Lecture. What difference does kinship make?
kinship worksheet copy.pdf
Descent
Unilineal
– Patrilineal
– Matrilineal
Bilateral
Trobriand kinship
– Baloma spirit
– Waiwai spirit
– Mother’s brother
– Parallel v cross cousins
– Yam garden ownership
– Yam exchange between men
– Trobriand courtship
– Sagali
– Banana leaf bundle and skirts
– Owners and workers
Worksheet instructions