87-Y-O Ukrainian Man May Break Guinness World Record of Having Largest Family With 346 Members
An 87-year-old man in the Ukraine has a large family, a potentially record-breaking one.
Pavel Semenyuk, a retired construction worker who resides in the village of Dobroslav in the Odessa Oblast province of southwestern Ukraine, is looking to claim the Guinness World Record for having the largest family on the planet, the Daily Mail reports.
It was reportedly Semenyuk's dream to have a big family and that has been realized.
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Semenyuk's family is made up of 346 living members, and that includes his 13 children, 127 grandchildren, 203 great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.
Vira Semenyuk, one of Pavel's daughters, shed light on what it's like to have such a big family. According to her, when birthdays or weddings are about to take place, they cook up large pots of food to feed everyone.
Many of the men in the Semenyuk family work in the construction business just like the patriarch, and they sometimes build new homes for their family members who are getting married.
The younger members of the Semenyuk clan also see plenty of familiar faces when they go to school, as 30 of the children attend the same local school.
Semenyuk admits that he has a hard time remembering the names of everyone in his family, but he can still recall the names of the older members.
He's the oldest member of the family, while the youngest was only 2 weeks old by the time the head of the National Register of Records, Lana Vetrova, dropped by to recognize the family as the largest one in the Ukraine.
Vetrova believes that the Semenyuks have a "good chance" to set a new Guinness World Record for being the largest family. Vetrova referenced a 192-member family in India as being the current record-holder.
The Indian family Vetrova referred to is the one headed by a man known as Mr. Ziona. The last time they were reported on Mr. Ziona had 38 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren. It is unclear if Mr. Ziona's family has increased in size since then.