Quiz: What Type of Genealogist Are You?

There are numerous types of genealogists, some are professionals who want to delve deeper into their research, some are hobbyists who like to do it for fun and write blog posts about their findings, and some just love finding their ancestors and relatives from centuries ago. We have created a quiz to help you find out what kind of genealogist you are, according to your unique personality traits and research styles.

Quiz

We have created a quiz with the top 6 types of genealogists most commonly found in ancestral research. Would you like to find out what type of genealogist you are? Take this short quiz to find out which group you belong to:

Below are the six different types of genealogists, ranging from hardcore professionals who like to get their head down and do research to family genealogists who love to find out more about their extended family, and even some who love to do other people’s research for them.

The Expert Genealogist

You are considered a professional genealogist if you live and breathe your research. It could even be that you have credible qualifications and awards that you’ve obtained throughout your genealogical journey. This individual will focus on accuracy above all else in their research and will try their best to submit articles to scholarly journals and biographical records. Pages and pages of editing and all the corrections from publishers do not intimidate professional genealogists but inspire them to do more research and be better. They will power through their article drafts, refining and making each draft more accurate than the last.

The Genealogy Blogger

The genealogy blogger will collect their research and describe it in the form of a blog, sharing it with other bloggers and genealogists online. This type of genealogist will add all the research they have found along the way in hopes that another distant relative is also looking for them online, fishing for extended family members in the form of a blog that everyone can access. This genealogist may be less academic than an expert but is equally passionate about sharing their findings and, say, showing other readers how to start a genealogy blog. The genealogy blogger will teach others what they have learned throughout their journey by giving tips and tricks to others along the way. This type of genealogist will come up with numerous ideas to share with their readers, like what to do once you have started a genealogy blog, and how to choose a great topic in a pool of hundreds of compelling ideas.

The Family Gatherer

This type of genealogist does not mind too much about the structure of their research but will still visit the national archives and do extensive online searches. This genealogist will find any clues and leads on their extended family members and their unique stories. Family gatherer genealogists have one main goal, to find an ancestor, and they will continue to dig through new research to find them.

The Hoarder

This type of genealogist conducts hours of research and manages to find a lot of new information regarding their ancestors but prefers to keep it to themselves. Whether it’s online or in their journals, these researchers will store their findings privately, with just their immediate family having the access to them, and will immerse themselves in ancestral research as individuals rather than seeking to communicate and expand their knowledge with other experts around.

The Junkyard Collector

This genealogist gets excited about online family trees/tree builders they find and merges them with their own. They never verify anything or properly check their facts, but they are passionate about collecting as much information as they can. They tend to have heaps of conflicting data and facts that do not make sense. They might even have female ancestors having children at the age of 100, and sometimes children being born before their parents. Nonetheless, this type of genealogist is still as curious about genealogy as the professional.

The Detective

This genealogist loves researching in general, even if it is not their ancestor. They will gladly help someone else with research about their ancestry purely for the enjoyment of the hunt. They are easily sidetracked from their findings by the exciting challenge of solving a stranger’s obstacles. This type of genealogist loves to work in a team to tackle complex challenges that they face when trying to find answers.

What unites these six types of genealogists is that they all look to complete their family trees and learn something new about their ancestors. No matter how detailed they choose their research to be, they work diligently to get one step closer to completing the pattern, regardless of whether they want to share it with anyone else or not.