ancestral line
Chain of forebears
An ancestral line is a chain of descent traced through successive generations—the sequence of ancestors connecting a person to their forebears.
The term typically refers to a single branch of a family tree: She traced her ancestral line back to colonial Virginia.
Genealogists may speak of maternal or paternal ancestral lines when following one parent's lineage exclusively.
- heritageInherited cultural legacy
- surnameHereditary family identifier
- family nameHereditary portion of identity
- tribal historyA people's collective past
- family treeChart of ancestors
pedigree · progenitor · great grandmother · ancestors · roots · ancestral spirits · ancestral homeland · genealogy · forebear · kinship · blood relation · oral history · matrilineal · generational wisdom · passing down · tradition · legacy · origin story
- kinshipmother, father, sister, brother, children
- royaltyking, queen, prince, princess, kings
- ancestorsancestors, forebears, forebear, forbear, forbears
- ancestryancestors, kinship, clan, dynasty, forefather
- lineageroyal dynasties, noble houses, dynasty, genealogy, heredity
- paternal lineagepatrilineage, patriarch, paterfamilias, forefather, progenitor
ancestral lineline of descent
Ancestral inheritance sequence
descendants · posterity · progeny · offspring · future generations