Because real human beings leave data tracks through time as if they were disparate shadow personas, this entity allows the genealogical researcher to tie together data from different personas that he or she believes belong to the same real person.

GENTECH Genealogical Data Model 1.1 - from the Persona entity definition.

Personas

Personas are central to the database, they are used collect together snippets of information that refer to the same person. There are two main usages, Reference Persona - the people mentioned in the Reference Documents; and Conclusion Persona - the individuals who form the final output of our studies.

Reference Persona

The evidence we have for our family histories is normally recorded in documents of some kind. As we interpret these documents we pick out the dates, places, names and relationships being used the events being described. We can associate these elements with personas that represent the people being described. The persona can then be linked to conclusion persona, either when we are examining the document or at some time later.

Conclusion Persona

Whenever we create an Individual who represents a real person in our family tree, this creates an associated persona. As with the Reference Persona, this persona is used link all the information we have gathered to the individual.