Kinship information in the 同年齿录 and related sources completed in August 2024

In mid-2023 we completed the entry of all of the information on the Jinshi 进士, Juren 举人, and Gongsheng 贡生 degree holders in the 19th century Classmate Books (同年齿录 for Jinshi and Juren, 明經通譜 for Gongsheng) and provincial exam Passer Lists (乡试录) that we could find. The resulting dataset has 73,744 records. Of these, 6,118 are Jinshi recorded in Classmate Books, 27,580 are Juren recorded in Classmate Books, 29,971 are Juren in Passer Lists, and 12,155 are Gongsheng in Classmate Books. The Classmate Books include lists of the kin of degree holders. When we first entered the Classmate Books, we only entered the basic information highlighted in yellow in the sample page. For consistency with Ho Ping-ti and others, we only entered information for father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Many degree holders listed dozens or hundreds of kin and after some initial experiments we concluded that at the outset it would be too time-consuming to enter all of them, and we wanted to prioritize the core information that was available for everyone.

In August 2024, we completed the entry of the additional kin. There were a total of 966,084 kin listed for the degree holders listed in the Classmate Books. After dropping 9,625 records from a Classmate Book with an irregular format and uncertain contents, another 6,132 records where no surname was available, and 192 duplicates, we are left with 950,735 records for 34,313 degree holders, that is 27.7 kin per degree holder. Jinshi listed the most kin, on average 90. Juren listed an average of 21.6 kin.

We expect analysis of the data to yield insights into the kin networks of late Qing elites. In the meantime, we have added all of these data to our search platform, which now has more than 1,000,000 searchable names from 19th century China:

http://vis.cse.ust.hk/searchjsl/

Below we present a tabulation of the top 100 most commonly listed relationships. 5 percent of the kin listed were sons, another 4 percent were nephews, another 4 percent were grandfathers, and so on. These are the terms as they appeared in the data, with little in the way of aggregation. We are still in the process of consolidating the kinship terms into a smaller number of analytically useful categories.

Relationship	Records	Cumulative Percentage
子	49212	5
胞姪	40354	9
祖	33758	13
父	33635	17
曾祖	33423	20
母	31403	23
胞弟	24666	26
妻	23414	28
祖母	19397	30
曾祖母	18090	32
胞兄弟	17596	34
胞叔	17268	36
女	16687	38
從堂兄弟	15985	39
堂兄弟	15931	41
曾祖妣	15800	43
堂伯叔	15360	44
祖妣	15313	46
胞伯叔	14729	48
胞兄	14050	49
堂姪	12935	50
從堂伯叔	12776	52
胞伯	12148	53
堂伯叔祖	11580	54
從堂姪	10073	55
伯叔祖	9051	56
族伯叔	8325	57
再從堂兄弟	8146	58
從堂伯叔祖	8070	59
族兄弟	8058	60
伯叔	7506	60
再從堂伯叔	6840	61
曾伯叔祖	6325	62
兄弟	6314	63
嫡堂姪	5629	63
娶	5583	64
族伯叔祖	5201	64
嫡堂兄弟	5108	65
高伯叔祖	4953	65
族姪	4812	66
再從堂姪	4711	66
姪	4625	67
孫	4315	67
嫡堂伯叔	4018	68
伯叔曾祖	3987	68
再從堂伯叔祖	3875	68
胞伯叔祖	3774	69
胞叔祖	3742	69
高祖	3658	70
高祖妣	3497	70
堂叔	3204	70
堂伯叔曾祖	3151	71
嫡堂弟	3053	71
堂曾伯叔祖	2967	71
堂弟	2908	72
從堂叔	2739	72
堂兄	2686	72
伯叔高祖	2668	72
堂姪孫	2545	73
嫡堂伯叔祖	2440	73
從堂弟	2432	73
胞伯祖	2405	74
始祖	2405	74
胞妹	2369	74
從堂伯叔曾祖	2320	74
堂叔祖	2243	74
妣	2207	75
嫡堂叔	2207	75
八世伯叔祖	2096	75
九世伯叔祖	2032	75
從堂兄	2006	76
庶母	1980	76
七世伯叔祖	1935	76
從堂曾伯叔祖	1906	76
嫡堂兄	1898	76
本生祖	1814	77
十世伯叔祖	1813	77
繼娶	1806	77
堂伯叔高祖	1771	77
本生父	1770	77
從堂叔祖	1769	78
本生母	1768	78
姪孫	1749	78
堂伯	1740	78
繼母	1718	78
六世伯叔祖	1681	78
從堂姪孫	1680	79
族伯叔曾祖	1673	79
太高祖	1666	79
太高伯叔祖	1659	79
胞姊	1625	79
三從堂兄弟	1590	79
五世伯叔祖	1558	80
族祖	1548	80
堂高伯叔祖	1515	80
再從兄弟	1493	80
十一世伯叔祖	1445	80
太高祖妣	1435	80
本生曾祖	1386	81
二世祖	1369	81