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My surname ? Married or maiden name

Sarah Haney Underwood

April 08, 2016 05:23

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I joined with my first, middle and married name then birth name. When l entered my parents, they were shown with my married name. How do l enter grandparents? Only choice l see is parent - this was supposed to be easy!

3 comments

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  Jeff, Geni Curator April 08, 2016 14:38

  That's certainly odd and not expected behavior.  When adding parents or siblings, it should default populate the last name based on your birth name.  The easiest way to add profiles is in tree view.  https://www.geni.com/family-tree

  There should be a yellow arrow on the profile of your parents.  Click that to add their father or mother.  Again, it should default populate those last names, but you can change them if there is any difference.

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  Harold Lumicao Liban November 29, 2016 08:14

  Whenever I add sibling names, children names, grandchildren names, grandparents names great grands on my trees from "VIEW TREE",

  1)  In the First Name Field, I enter the first name.   There are cases with two first names before the Middle Name and Surname. Example: James Aaron

  2)  In the Middle Name Field, I enter the Mother's Maiden Surname (unmarried surname).

  3)  In the Surname Field, I enter the Surname.

  Note - This is how Filipinos write their names, and this is the way I show individual's full names in that order.   I have seen many instances by my relatives that do not follow the above steps, and they enter too many names that can become very confusing.  In cases like that, I don't even want to touch it, I might make it worse.  Example: When a relative's husband is married, he enters his spouse's full name adding his married surname.  Example: My full name, Harold Lumicao Liban married Corita Calo Liban.  Corita Calo Liban's name is not her real unmarried name.  Her real unmarried name is Corita Macute Calo.  There is no Yellow Up Arrow showing on her Pink name box in the "VIEW TREE" leading up to Corita's Father and Mother, grandparents, etc.  When the husband and spouse is shown together on the siblings line, the blue and pink name boxes appears as if they are siblings with the same surname.  When entered correctly only three names is needed, no parenthesized names.  I haven't had any problems entering names. 

  To distinguish Surnames I enter vice the Surnames my Collaborator cousin G.E.N.E.R.O.S.O Bulan Lumicao enters.  His Surnames are not capitalized (lower fonts).  My Surnames are capitalized (upper fonts).

  Edited by Harold Lumicao Liban November 29, 2016 08:43
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  Jeff, Geni Curator November 29, 2016 14:56

  Harold, you should not capitalize the surname on Geni.  https://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions#No_all_CAPS  If you prefer to view the maiden name in all CAPS, you can set this as a display option under the tree preferences or account settings under name preferences.  

  Also, you shouldn't use the middle name field as the Mother's Maiden Surname unless the person legally changed their middle name.  Put the Mother's Maiden Surname in the Birth Surname field.  The Last Name field should contain the current last name.  So if your wife took your last name and did not legally change her middle name, it should be Corita Macute Liban (born Calo).  If you want to see the name formatted differently, you can again define that in your naming preferences to ignore the last name.  Use the fields for how they are intended and let the user define how it is displayed.