My theme for the Family History through the Alphabet is the Attributes we need as family historians: the skills, experience and talents we need to bring to our research. This week we arrive at the tricky letter X.
X is for SCANDALS: All along I had a rating for this letter, but then realised if I used it my spam mail was likely to be flooded, so scandals it is. Not precisely an attribute but we as family historians do need to cope with all those scandals and skeletons that come out of the cupboards, the ones that earlier generations carefully concealed: convicts, illegitimate children, adoptions in/out, bigamy, incest, murder, victims of crime, divorce, mental illness, extreme poverty, etc etc. While many of these would no longer gain that letter-rating I carefully didn’t mention, some can still bring us up short and others ensure that the information may well still be concealed within the family. How we deal with this information, balancing honesty in reporting with respect for the people whose lives they were, as well as for their living decendants, definitely needs to be part of our family historian attributes. Which takes us back to E for Ethics (not to mention eXcellence).
X is (not) for XENOPHOBIC: Thanks to a former Australian parliamentarian we’re all familiar with this word. Since many of us have ancestors who were immigrants from different cultures and countries we can hardly afford to be xenophobic about people from other lands. It becomes a challenge to learn all we need to know about their former lives, what conditions may have propelled them to emigrate etc.
X is for eXTRANEOUS: As genealogists we need the ability to sift the extraneous or the deliberately deceptive information we obtain or are given: to sort the wheat from the chaff. It’s all too easy to be beguiled by a fanciful story handed down through the generations but we do need to practice D for Discernment.
Can you think of any other X words that should be added to our list of family historian attributes?
Images from Microsoft Office clip art online.
Family history across the seas 
eXtra… ok, stretching it a bit, but Xtra for going just that little bit further, Xtra for effort, eXciting when all the Xtra effort pays off… and for all you have taught me, eXcellent…!
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Thanks for the compliment Chris 🙂 I kept hearing those Telegraph boys on the corner of the city streets shouting “extra, extra, read all aboud’id” Haven’t thought of that for years.
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definitely eXcitement 🙂 !
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Xcitement, Xtra, Xcellent – It’s a silly language isn’t it that we have to slip in all these eX words in lieu of X 🙂
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eXcellent job of digging up some Xs. I think Y is going to be a similar letter for me. ;D
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Yep some letters are just sent to try us 😉
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Love those monkeys 🙂 ………
“Scandals” YES!!! agree absolutely with all you’ve written. Anti – “Xenophobia” YES!!! Remembering how badly my Irish GGGrandmother was treated/ discriminated against, and her daughter… with some of it still filtering down to my Grandmother. Glad you didn’t use eXpert, cos, as we all know, that is just “a drip under pressure”. HA HA HA. Thanks for another thought provoking post Pauleen.
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I’m glad I didn’t succumb to eXpert too 😉 Finding those monkeys was a definite case of lateral thinking.
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With all of my hubby’s convicts, I can definately relate to the ‘scandals’. Fabulous words yet again … looking forward Y already.
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Thanks Alona..I really wanted to use a rating rather than scandals but had visions of links of an inappropriate nature. Y and Z are in the pipeline waiting 😉
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Some days it certainly is eXcruciating!
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Surely is, Fi, especially when I’m working on those eXcrutiating German newspapers 😉
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Well Done. I wondered what attributes you would come up for “X”
Isn’t Xenophilia the opposite for “Xenophobia”?
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after a tourist experience today xenophobia looks like it has some virtues 😉
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