Specific to the United States, the
Social Register is a directory of names and addresses of prominent American families who are claimed to be from the social
elite. 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. They are
Baltimore,
Boston,
Chicago,
Cleveland,
New York,
Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh,
Portland,
Providence,
San Francisco,
Seattle, 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, have been published for hundreds of years.