What it does
Kinship diagrams are how anthropologists record who is related to whom. This page draws one for you with the usual symbols:
- △ triangle for a male, ○ circle for a female and □ square when the sex is unknown or not recorded;
- = between two people for a marriage, crossed with // for a divorce, and a single line for two parents who are not married;
- a vertical line down from the couple to a horizontal siblings bar, with each child hanging from it;
- a slash through the symbol of someone who has died;
- Ego, the person every relation is counted from, filled in.
Under each person it writes their kin type in standard notation, worked out from the links you entered: F father, M mother, B brother, Z sister, S son, D daughter, H husband, W wife, with P (parent), G (sibling), C (child) and E (spouse) when the sex is unknown. Codes read outwards from Ego, so FBD is the father’s brother’s daughter and MZS the mother’s sister’s son: the two kinds of first cousin that many kinship systems treat very differently (parallel cousins). A table lists every relative with the code, the reading in words, the generation (+1 for Ego’s parents, −1 for Ego’s children) and whether the link is by blood or by marriage.
It works well with the publication plot maker and the social network analysis.
How to use it
- Start from the example or press Start again to begin with Ego alone.
- Next to any person, Add relative adds a father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, child, husband or wife in one step, already linked. Then rename them.
- Or add people one by one and pick their Parent 1 and Parent 2. Add marriages under Marriages, and tick Divorced where it applies. Tick Deceased for anyone who has died.
- Choose who is Ego: all the codes are recalculated from that person.
- Turn the kin type and name labels on or off, and switch Fit to width off to see a large diagram at full size.
- Download the diagram as SVG (for editing or printing at any size) or PNG, or the report with the relations table as an image, PDF or Word file.
Privacy
Family information is personal. Use pseudonyms or initials for real people. Nothing is stored in your browser or sent anywhere: the diagram disappears when you close the page. To keep it, press Save to a file (a small JSON file on your own device) and reopen it later with Open a saved file.
Worked example
The example family (invented names) has Ego, Ravi, with his wife Jaya and their son Kiran (S). Ravi’s late father Arun (F) and his brother Chetan (FB) are sons of Lalit (FF, deceased) and Meera (FM). Chetan and his wife Devi (FBW) have a daughter, Esha: FBD. Ravi’s mother Bina (M) and her sister Farah (MZ) are children of Noor, whose sex is not recorded, so Noor is MP and drawn as a square. Farah, now divorced from Gopal (MZH), has a son Hari: MZS. Choose Esha as Ego instead and Ravi becomes her FBS.
How the codes are worked out
Each person is linked to their parents, children, spouses and full siblings (people with the same known parent or parents). The code is the shortest chain of links from Ego. A half-sibling, who shares only one parent, comes out as FS or MD, which is how the notation records them. When two chains are equally short, a chain of blood links is preferred over one through a marriage.
FAQ
Can I draw polygamous marriages or remarriage? Yes: add each marriage. A person with several spouses is drawn between them.
Why is someone shown as ”–”? They are not linked to Ego by any chain of parents, children, siblings or marriages. Add the missing link.
Does the layout handle cousin marriage? The codes are always right, but when the same people appear on both sides of a family the layout may need lines that cross. Download the SVG to tidy it in a drawing program.
Where the numbers come from
- Conventions: standard anthropological kinship diagram symbols and kin type notation (primitive kin types F, M, B, Z, S, D, H, W; P, G, C, E for sex unknown), as taught in introductory anthropology.
- Example family: made up, with invented names.
Standard scientific values, such as constants, atomic weights and melting points, are facts found in every textbook; we name where ours were checked. If you are an author or publisher and want a value, a credit or a table changed or removed, tell us and we will act quickly.
Last updated 2026-11-09.