About & method
A birthday directory with its evidence attached
WhoWasBorn answers who was born on a date and when a person was born. Our dataset contains notable humans with at least ten Wikidata sitelinks. Lists are ordered by a combination of sitelinks and English Wikipedia pageviews over twelve complete months. Being included does not certify fame, identity, or a birth date.
Sources, references, and uncertainty
Facts are synchronized from Wikidata under CC0. “Source” means a stated-in work (P248) or a non-Wikimedia reference URL (P854). An imported-from reference, Wikipedia import URL, or retrieval timestamp alone is not an external source. A link to a Wikidata source item identifies the cited work when the reference supplies no external URL. We do not claim independent verification.
How we choose the main date
The main non-deprecated statement is chosen by preferred rank, number of reference blocks, precision, then deterministic value and statement ordering. Preferred rank reflects Wikidata editorial priority; it is not proof. We retain incompatible alternatives with their own precision, rank, and sources.
When dates disagree
We compare intervals: a year covers that whole year, a month that whole month, and a day that single day. An 1880 year statement and August 10, 1880 are compatible; March 31 and May 31, 1956 are not. An ambiguous profile shows its main date and incompatible alternatives, omits an exact age, and omits birthDate from Person structured data. Reduced-precision and unknown-calendar dates also have no exact birthDate. Precision below a year is treated conservatively, without an exact age.
Ages and February 29
Ages are calculated for every request using the server’s current UTC date, with no year zero for historical dates. HTTP freshness ends at the next UTC midnight. In non-leap years, someone born on February 29 gains a year on March 1. For deceased people we show years lived, never a present-day age. Missing or ambiguous death dates do not yield an exact age at death. A missing death date does not establish that a person is alive; we omit a current age for births more than 120 years ago.
Calendars and zodiac ranges
Day pages use the proleptic Gregorian calendar. Wikidata RDF dates are already normalized; they are not converted again. Profiles label original Julian calendars. Zodiac ranges use a fixed Western tropical calendar convention, inclusive at the start and exclusive at the next sign’s start, without birth-time calculations or personality claims.
Names, countries, and profile visibility
Birth name is P1477, not an assertion of a “real name.” Citizenship is P27, not nationality or country of birth. Name slugs use normalized Latin letters and digits; all colliding names add a lowercase Wikidata QID. Labels that cannot produce a Latin slug use person-qid. Low-detail, unsourced, ambiguous, or imprecise profiles remain reachable but are excluded from search indexing. Profession and country hubs are deferred until hierarchy and geographic membership rules are reliable.
Content changes and synchronization
“Synchronized from Wikidata on” reports the dataset snapshot. WebPage dateModified records substantive profile content changes, preserving the previous date when an identical content hash is rebuilt. Synchronization timestamps and daily ages do not reset it. Profiles are not independently fact-checked.