Add a godfather-godmother

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In many cultures children are watched over by a Godparent's. Here we explain how to add this relationship to a person.

Godparent is now one of the pre-defined Event Roles.— ⚡new for version 5.2.0 After much discussion, the conclusion was that since Gender was already known, using a gender-neutral relationship (of Godparent to Godchild) simplifies searches. Rather than using an Association as described below, share the child's Christening or Baptism event to the Godparent's personal events. Select the Godparent pre-defined Role for the shared Event. See the Discourse discussion about converting 5.1 godparent Associations to a shared Event role.

Add the godfather/mother

Including the Godparents (either a Godfather and/or Godmother) of a child in your tree can be informative. In many cases, they are later discovered to be a close or distant family member. Tracing the ancestry of an apparently unconnected Godparent may open a new lead for attacking your Tree's brickwalls.

If the Godparent is not already in your Tree, add a Godparent as an unrelated person. Go to the person view, and simply add them using the "add..." Edit menu option or the "Add a new person" (+) icon in the Toolbar. (In many cases, the initial information available for a godparent will only be their name and the child's christening/baptism date... a day on which the Godparent was certainly alive.)


Add the relationship

Associations tab

The godfather/mother relationship can be added to a person in the Associations tab of the person editor. So open the person that is the godchild, go to that tab, and add the godfather and godmother (submitted change to be gender neutral godparent) association by selecting godfather/mother and select the godparent from the person list.


Add all participants and attendees to the baptism

Normally, the baptism record will show the godfather/mother relationship. So create a Baptism/Christening event for the person being baptized. (The Role for new Events defaults to 'Primary' for a person.)

Now go to the Events tab of the godfather/mother person, and click the index button to select an existing event.

Tango-Dialog-information.png
The Clipboard is about Sharing

When sharing an Event or Citation with several people, the process is much easier with the clipboard than repeatedly using the Select Dialog. Drag the freshly created Baptism Event in the Primary person to the Clipboard. Close the Primary person and open the target person. Drag the Event from the clipboard to each target person.


The event is now a shared event but the Role is "Unknown".

Open the Event Editor for each target person, and set the role of the person to 'Godparent'. If the appropriate role is not in the pull-down list, typewrite in a new term to add a 'custom type'.

Alternative: don't create a person

Some people are averse to adding people to their family tree they only have a name of. First, allow us to point out why you should nevertheless make a person:

  • Gramps supports this.
  • You might encounter the same person again in your research. Having him in the person view increases the likelihood of you recognizing it is the same person as the one that appears as godfather/mother.
  • The Find Possible Duplicate People... tool has more information to work with.

If you nevertheless want to record the godfather/mother, without creating a person, use the attribute tab of the person instead. You can add to a person the attribute godfather/mother, with as value the name. You can do the same with the baptize event.

Related

See also