Geneall
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| Type of business | Nonprofit |
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Type of site | Genealogy Database |
| Available in | English Portuguese Spanish French German Italian |
| Headquarters | Lisbon, Portugal |
| Owner | Luís Amaral |
| Created by | Luís Amaral (founder) |
| URL | geneall |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional (required to access most information) |
| Launched | 2000 |
| Current status | Active |
Content license | CC-BY-SA |
Geneall.net is a Portuguese public internet database on family history and genealogy, mainly concerning Royalty and Aristocracy around the world.[1] It is a collaborative effort by a small group of expert genealogists in Lisbon, with over 3 million individuals (living and deceased) and 177,000 family names in the database. For many of those individuals, there is a corresponding subpage displaying an ancestry chart. It is the largest Portuguese-language internet database concentrating on genealogy, but it is not restricted to Portuguese, offering five other languages.[2]
Geneall uses a nobility pedigree structure which arranges individuals into descendants of five historic European sovereigns; namely Ferdinand I of Castile and León, William the Conqueror, Hugh Capet, Charlemagne and Afonso I of Portugal.[3]
The site comprises historical and contemporary influential people primarily, such as monarchs, nobles, distinguished statesmen and eminent artists, as well as their descendants. Geneall has been referred to as "a hub for the gossip of who's who" and serves as the genealogical database of those born or married into gentry.[4]
Although the information displayed on the site is strictly added and revised by the Geneall employees, users are allowed to send potential corrections based on reliable sources through a form sent directly within the site.
Since late 2016, and as a result of an attempt to raise funds for the maintenance of the database, most of the features that were once open to the general public have been closed and now require a paid membership to access.[5]
The site was created in 2000. Initially, it was called Genea Portugal and was hosted as a portal in SAPO. It originated from the database created when Luís Amaral started a collaboration with the newspaper O Independente at the request of the then director Paulo Portas. The collaboration consisted of the drafting of a supplement of genealogical collectibles for the newspaper. The supplement, called "Names of Portugal" (from January to June 1998) had 26 weekly issues with 24 pages, with information on about 80 Portuguese family names.
As of January 2018, the database had information on more than 3 million people and 177,000 family names.