If you've ever looked at online family trees or family trees in professional genealogy books or other publications, you have probably seen numbers by the names of individuals on the trees. While there are a few different methods for numbering your genealogy, all of the numbering systems have one purpose… to help you keep things organized so you can easily find and identify individuals and their relationships to other individuals on your family tree. Most numbering systems display in the order of the descendants of a given person, while the Ahnentafel system numbers people according to their ancestry to a certain individual.
Here are the most common genealogical numbering systems and how to use them.