Now THAT’s a family of celebrities. Genealogy super-star sleuths Christopher Child and Rhonda McClure at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society have discovered that Ellen DeGeneres is related through an “ancestral circle”(*) to a remarkable number of celebrities.
“We’ve done lots of research that connects various celebrities and public figures,” commented Childs. “This is the first time I’ve discovered a large circle of relationships like this. Genealogically speaking, this is pretty rare and amazing.”
Childs and McClure were first asked to research Ellen’s genealogy in 2008, when the relationship to Halle Berry was discovered. It has taken many months to find Ellen’s extended “family.”
According to NEHGS, Ellen is related to
- Halle Berry who is related to
- Mark Wahlberg who is related to
- Madonna who is related to
- Camilla Parker-Bowles who is related to
- Diana, Princes of Wales who is related to
- Tim Robbins who is related to
- Richared Gere who is related to
- Ellen
All those cousins and once removeds put some relationships a bit far back in the timeline, but does royalty ANYwhere do anything to increase the chance of being called Lady Ellen?
Read the full story and see Ellen’s celebrity wheel with all the connections at http://www.newenglandancestors.org/.
See a clip from The Ellen DeGeneres show with Ellen showing off her celebrity relationships.
* – don’t look for a definition of “ancestral circle”. I just coined it to identify relationships through an ancestor to a wider circle of people. Sort of a “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” thing.
Absolutely correct, John. It’s more of a circle of connections than an ancestral line. Ellen called it a "Kevin Bacon" kind of relationship — degrees of separation.
Actually, Ellen is a 10th cousin of Halle Berry, and Halle Berry is an 11th cousin of Mark Wahlberg. There is no claim that Ellen is related to Mark Wahlberg at all. The circle continues and comes back to Ellen, but the article does not state that she is related to all of the celebrities.
A paternal fist cousin and a maternal first cousin aren’t related to each other at all. (unless there is coincidence, or inbreeding.)