Lineage Glossary
Key lineage, rank, and verification terms used across Black Belt Legacy.
Passport
A Passport is a person's one global identity record on Black Belt Legacy, the same record no matter how many lineage trees, ranks, or organizations they appear in. It holds identity facts like display name and avatar, kept separate from any single rank or tree.
Claim (claiming a profile)
Claiming is how a real person takes ownership of their own entry on the lineage tree: they register, confirm their rank and the teacher who promoted them, and submit any supporting evidence. A steward with review permission reviews the claim before the profile attaches to the claimant's account, and claiming is free.
Steward
A steward is the person who reviews a claim before it is marked verified: a site admin, a tree admin, an editor of a branch or of a single person's entry, or anyone else given explicit permission to review. Verification on Black Belt Legacy is always a human decision made by a steward, never an automatic one.
Verified rank
A verified rank is a promotion record that a steward has reviewed and marked verified. A rank can also be unverified, disputed, or pending review. Verified means a steward reviewed the record itself, whether it was originally imported or newly claimed, not that the practitioner personally supplied proof for every detail.
Promoter
A promoter is the teacher who awarded a rank. Black Belt Legacy records the promoter as part of that rank's record and draws a line on the lineage tree from teacher to student.
Lineage tree
A lineage tree is Black Belt Legacy's public, browsable record of who promoted whom inside one discipline or family line. It is built from person records connected by promotions, explorable from any listed person back toward the root.
Belt
A belt is a rank, one position in a discipline's ordered rank system, such as the white-through-black-through-red progression in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Black Belt Legacy records a person's belt as part of their rank record, tied to the promoter who awarded it.
Stripe
A stripe is a degree mark on a belt showing incremental progress within that rank; colored belts carry zero to four stripes, and black, coral, and red belts carry degrees numbered one through ten using the same mark. Black Belt Legacy records this as the rank's degree and shows it on the belt in the tree and on a profile.
The Machado lineage
The Machado lineage is the branch of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that runs from Carlos Gracie Sr through Carlos Gracie Jr to Rigan Machado, a 9th Degree Red Belt. It is the first lineage tree Black Belt Legacy built, recording Rigan Machado and the students promoted under him. His appearance on the tree is a lineage fact the record keeps, not an endorsement of Black Belt Legacy, and not a partnership or approval.
The Bob Bass lineage
Bob Bass is a 7th Degree Coral Belt who, by Black Belt Legacy's record, was the first black belt Rigan Machado promoted and later the first American Rigan Machado promoted to coral belt. The students Bob Bass has promoted are recorded on the tree under him. His presence on the record is a lineage fact, not an endorsement, partnership, or approval of Black Belt Legacy.
The Dirty Dozen
The Dirty Dozen is the historical name for the first twelve non-Brazilian practitioners to earn a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Black Belt Legacy's record includes five of them who were promoted by Rigan Machado: Bob Bass, Rick Williams, David Meyer, Chris Haueter, and John Will. Their names on the tree are lineage facts, not endorsements of the platform, and not evidence that any of them has a business relationship with it.