Due to the lack of historical sources, as well as the incompleteness of available information, it is impossible to establish the origin of Gediminas for certain. The main question of historiography was the establishment of the degree of kinship of Gediminas in relation to his predecessor, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytenis. (Gediminas it is mentioned as son of Vytenis in 1657 source - attached to profile). In the legendary part of the Lithuanian-Belorussian chronicles and in all pre-scientific historiography, Gediminas is represented as the son of Vytenis. From the end of the 19th century, a point of view was established based on a found letter - from one of the members of the Riga magistrate to Gediminas himself (in which Vytenis was named as "brother and predecessor" of Gediminas), that he was brother of Vytenis and son of the great prince of Lithuania Pukuveras Butvydas.
In the 1970s, Jerzy Okhmansky put forward a version that Gediminas was a descendant of Scolomend. This version is based on the words of the sons of Algirdas, described in the ancient Russian poem "Zadonshchina", whre they claim their origin from Scolomend. Since the poem misses the generation of the Butvydas and Pukuveras princes known from other sources, Okhmansky suggested that Scolomend was the father of Pukuveras and Gediminas' grandfather. According to Stephen Rowell, Scolomend could be Gediminas' father-in-law. In the opinion of Thomas Baranauskas (Lithuanian born historian), Gediminas could have been Vytenis' cousin, and not his brother.