This paper is a modest attempt to present a rather simplistic pedigree of sociolinguistics. It first describes the rise of sociolinguistics in the mid-1960s as an established academic discipline. The subsequent sections briefly survey the historial background of sociolinguistics in general, and the historical antecedents of the three main strands/orientations of modern sociolingujistics: the variation study, the ethnography of communication, and the sociology of language. The variation study, being primarily concerned with language variation and language change, finds its ancestry in the early studies in dialectology and historical linguistics. The ethnography of communication derives from anthropological linguistics and the language philosophy of 18th- and 19th-century German thinkers. The history of the sociology of language, which is rather short, stretches back to the earlier studies of language contact, bilingualism, and language policy.