The Person entity represents a specific unique person. Most Properties will be dependent on the date of some activity or registration, and these should be included through a <SourceLnk> element of an Event (or Eventlet) entity. The only direct data are the core ones such as their name, birth-sex, birth, death, and biological parentage. These are primarily conclusions drawn from information in the cited sources. SourceLnk can also be used to associate static Properties directly with the Person, and an example might be their blood group or other congenital detail.
<Person Key=’key’>
[ <Title> person-title </Title> ]
[ <Sex [DATA_ATTRIBUTE] ... > boolean </Sex> ]
[ NAME_VARIANTS | { <PersonalName [DATA_ATTRIBUTE] ... > personal-name </PersonalName> } ]
[ <FatherPersonLnk Key=’key’ [DATA_ATTRIBUTE] ... >
[ TEXT_SEG ] ...
</FatherPersonLink> ]
[ <MotherPersonLnk Key=’key’ [DATA_ATTRIBUTE] ... >
[ TEXT_SEG ] ...
</MotherPersonLink> ]
[ <Birth>
[ TEXT_SEG ] ...
</Birth> ]
[ <Death>
[ TEXT_SEG ] ...
</Death> ]
[ <MemberOf Key=’key’ [RANGE_FROM] [RANGE_TO]>
[ TEXT_SEG ] ...
</MemberOf> ] ...
[ EVENTLET ] ...
[ SOURCE_LNK ] ...
[ CONTACT_DETAILS ]
[ EXTERNAL_ID ] ...
[ TEXT_SEG ] ...
</Person>
It should be noted that STEMMA Persons may be disjoint from a lineage point of view. That means that the Persons in a given Dataset do not necessarily constitute a single tree or connected set. This is designed to accommodate both Persons of uncertain relationship and Persons who are not family members at all but who may still have contributed to their history.
The <Title> element provides a unique descriptive title for the Person. This controls how you want to see the Person identified in any genealogical reports or charts. It is not the same as their full formal name or their name variations — both of which may be date-dependent (see Personal Names). It could default to their full name at birth but this might also be annotated, say, with their date-of-birth if there were multiple people with the same title. For instance: “John Smith (1892)”. It may also be used to distinguish people in different generations, or branches, with the same name, or different siblings with the same name (e.g. when one has died), or unnamed children who died at birth. See also One Name to Rule Them All.
NB: The Person’s name may not be known, and similarly with their sex and biological parentage.
The birth and death Events are specifically identified since there cannot be more than one of each (in contrast to other Event-types) and as an aid to creating traditional family trees and pedigree charts.
The <Sex> element represents the Person’s birth sex. Although Sex is not really a Boolean, STEMMA avoids assigning English Male/Female initials and uses a 1/0 replacement instead. Sex is actually tri-state since there is no default when it is not specified. The assumption made here is that the birth sex — however indeterminate — is a single value. If that person undergoes some later gender reassignment then that would be recorded through ‘Medical’ Events. If the person adopts some lifestyle outside of traditional bi-gender roles (e.g. LGBT) then that can be recorded through biographical narrative in conjunction with relevant Events. See also No Sex Please, We're Genealogists!
The association with one-or-more Groups may be constrained to a range of dates by specifying their entry and exit within <MemberOf> elements. The dates default to their birth and death of the Person if a range has been left open.