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In this page, I explain with four examples why I did not use data from before Arnoul de Metz
(582-640) in the rest of my genealogy pages, and how I did my research, unless I could find enough supporting evidence. In my page going back to Attila the Hun, for example, the page has links to four websites with supporting evidence. Each generation has a name in black and a name in blue. Each name in blue has one or more links to other websites offering supporting data, such as Geni, Findagrave and Familypedia, like this:
Arnoul de Metz
(582-640) has three links embedded in the name.
https://www.geni.com/people/Saint-Arnoul-Bishop-of-Metz/6000000003302337846
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Arnulf_of_Metz_(582-640)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174751577/saint_arnulf-of_metz
I use Geneanet for the images, but if I find information on Geneanet that cannot be confirmed elsewhere, I look for a different path which can be confirmed, and stop when no more confirming data can be found.
The parents of Arnoul de Metz and his wife Doda are uncertain. There is no confirmed family connection between the Carolingian Dynasty and the Merovingian Dynasty (who preceded them) before Charles Martel, founder of the Carolingian Dynasty, defeated the Moors (Muslims) in the Battle of Tours in 732 AD, sending them back to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain), where they ruled for seven more centuries, as our Spanish ancestors fought against them for many generations until they were finally expelled from Europe.
The mother of Gertrude de Baviere (560-) is uncertain.
The parents of Itta de Nivelles (592-652) are uncertain, but Geni offers a good explanation concerning the uncertainty, well worth reading.
The website that got me interested in finding the lineage back to Charlemagne was Familypedia, when I searched for Edith Windsor
(1515-1563) on Google.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Edith+Windsor+(1515-1563)
People were once named after their fathers, like Jakobsson or Andersdotter or Fitzrobert or Fitzroy, after their professions, like Robert the Baker and John the Blacksmith, and after the places they were from, like de Lascours or de Washington, where 'de' or 'von' or 'of' was used by the nobility ruling over their area. After the Norman Conquest and the Domesday Book, records were kept in great detail of all land and property for tax purposes, and people began to use surnames to determine title, or inheritance of property, and for taxation in Richard II’s Poll Tax lists of 1381. Genealogical data from before this period is often speculative when definitive records were not kept or that do not survive to this day. The most accurate records were kept by the nobility, who used their lineage to justify their status, in court documents and church records.
I searched for every name similarly on Google, and kept notes about uncertain ancestry. There were variations in the year of birth and death on different websites, so I chose the most likely combination. For example, it is very unlikely that Edith de Windsor lived to the age of 98 in the 1500s. There were also differences in the names and the spellings of the names, so I chose the name in the language of the country where the person was born. Genealogy is a giant puzzle and this website is a 'best effort,' subject to change whenever I can find better information.
Geni and Findagrave offer the most reliable data. Geneanet has many impressive images, but the images often have mistakes in them, with some data presented by Geneanet members which are so far-fetched as to show extremely wishful thinking, as the invalid examples below suggest.
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