Social Register
Inclusion in the "Social Register" has historically been limited to members of "polite society", members of the American upper class and The Establishment, and/or those of "old money" or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) families, within the "Social Register" cities. According to McNamee and Miller: "the acronym WASP... is exemplified by the "Social Register", a list of prominent upper-class families first compiled in 1887... There is great continuity across generations among the names included in these volumes." The cities are Newport, Rhode Island; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Los Angeles; New York; New Jersey; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; Providence; San Francisco; Seattle; St. Louis; and Washington, D.C.; as well as ones for "Southern Cities". In European countries, similar directories for the perceived upper class, such as "Burke's Peerage" and "Landed Gentry" in the United Kingdom, or the Carnet Mondain and High Life in Belgium, have been published for centuries.