Some iwi cluster into larger groupings based on genealogical tradition, known as waka (literally: "canoes", with reference to the original migration voyages), but these super-groupings generally serve symbolic rather than practical functions.

Many were in fact swallowed by oblivion; when we examine the writing of Tirechan we encounter obscure references to tribes which are quite unknown to the later genealogical tradition.

This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.

Offa of Angel is a legendary king of the Angles recorded in the 9th-century genealogical tradition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

After the extinction of the druids, they were brought in to preserve the genealogy of families, and to repeat genealogical traditions at the succession of every chieftain.

By the late 20th century, the division has become mostly a matter of genealogical tradition without any direct societal or economic reality.

Modern historians believe this scheme is artificial, constructed in the 8th century from the various genealogical traditions of politically powerful groups, and intended to justify the current status of those groups by projecting it back into the remote past.

His place in the genealogical tradition of the MacDonalds is the only reason for believing in his existence, a genealogical tradition that not all historians have accepted.

The euhemerizing treatment of Woden as the common ancestor of the royal houses is presumably a "late innovation" within the genealogical tradition which developed in the wake of the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons.

Levitical status is passed down in families from parent to child, as part of a family's genealogical tradition.