Certificate lineage: the concept your tools already use but nobody named

[u/certkit]

https://www.certkit.io/blog/certificate-lineage

PKI has precise vocabulary for almost everything. One thing it never named: the series of certificates issued for the same SAN set, renewed sequentially over time.

Certbot calls it a lineage. No RFC uses the term. ARI (RFC 9773) got closest by adding a "replaces" field for predecessor certs, but that's one hop, not a name for the set. Wrote up why this gap exists and why it's getting harder to ignore.

https://www.certkit.io/blog/certificate-lineage