I have never understood why, working in tree view, if I add a wife, it uses the husband's surname for her default maiden name. The default should either be father's surname or it should be blank
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Votes
15 comments
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Philip James Decker, Ͼ Even if the knowledge-base requirements for defaulting name fields' values with 99.9%+ accuracy were achievable, it would not help, given that people enter names before they (maybe) enter dates or places.
Defaulting name fields is a very insular and (as implemented) anglo-centric approach that just annoys and creates extra work for everyone else.
However, if a few rules were predefined and each user could optionally select one such rule, which applies only to the profiles that user adds, it might save a little typing for those users, without irritating the rest of us.
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Bjørn P. Brox PATRICIA, - this item is flagged as done.
It is your own setting that decides if you want a suggested surname or not.
Check the "Do not guess last names" option in the names section under Preferences at the bottom of tree-view.
However: This option is still missing in the general http://www.geni.com/account_settings/name_preferences
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Noah Tutak This is a great idea. What if we defaulted to the father's surname, or if that doesn't exist, the brother's surname or sister's maiden name?
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Terry Jackson (Switzer) Exactly what is needed Noah.
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Philip James Decker, Ͼ No, please do NOT default a female's birth surname to her father's surname.
While that may work, at certain time times in history for certain northern European countries (and their colonies), it is not universally applicable. In particular, it creates extra work for Spanish names, and probably for others.
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Terry Jackson (Switzer) Oh, dear! I wonder if a cut off date for such a default would be workable and would it help?
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Arnold Grøvdal I think that the so called patronymikon ( or matronymikon) is a good way to use as the default name of the wife.
Arnold Grøvdal
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Lois Lubin Currently, what it did was use the last name of the person you were adding from - if added from her father, it used his last name, if from her brother it used that last name, if from husband, used his. I am not sure I tried from married sister, so not sure if used her married name here or not.
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Remi Trygve Pedersen Noah, in a genealogical database, a persons last name is alwaus his/her birth name. I would prefer that there is no default at all.
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Niclas Carlenius I like it the way it is now. Adding a child puts the last name of the parent I start from as default. Adding a wife puts the husband's name as default. So I try to add by using the yellow arrow from a person with the same last name. When the default is wrong, I simply change the name before I save. This works great.
Of course wives can have different last names than their husbands - in different countries and also within the same country. No default name will be correct in all cases. But using a default that is correct in the higest percentage of cases minimizes the total extra work for all users.
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Žilvinas Bartkus For Lithuanian - females (wifes, daughters) always have different surnames (ending of it) from males surnames. Defaulting female surname to father/husband makes no sense for our location.
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Job Waterreus Just reading the discussions here a have a few questions:
Is there a definition for maiden name and last name and how these fields should be filled? (would it be possible to have a set of rules for filling these fields?) When (if ever) is it ok to have a value for last name but not for maiden name?
As far as I understand it the maiden name is the name a female is born with. What if she is a foundling? What if she changes her name? (in some countries children can choose the name of the mother; sometimes it is possible to just change to name so it will be neither that of the father nor that of the mother)
What is put in last name? when can it change? what happens if she marries, divorces, remarries,...? Is this the same for all periods and countries?
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PATRICIA FAYE LANG this is still happening
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Barry Michael Graham I think it should add the father's name as the default surname, and prompt for the maiden name.
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Barry Michael Graham Correction - I think it should add the husband's name as the default surname, and prompt for the maiden name.
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