Change "maiden name" field to "birth name" or "original name" and make it equally accessible to men and women (that is, not hidden for men).
As it is, it is too culture-specific and gendered.
Change "maiden name" field to "birth name" or "original name" and make it equally accessible to men and women (that is, not hidden for men).
As it is, it is too culture-specific and gendered.
Men do not have a Maiden Name, and it will help for women who have married more then once.
Birth name would be helpful for both men and women who are adopted or change their names for some other reason.
Name at birth?
Birth/Original Name should be the ONLY field that appears upon profile creation
A null value should be allowed (i.e. unknown)
A clickable button labelled "Additional Names" should allow entering subsequent name changes.
Each additional name should have attributes:
- Reason (required)
- Begin and End dates (may be null)
Reason may be:
- An Event
- A selection from a chooser list of typical reasons
- A user-specified reason
Often "birth name" is not known, but it is known that name was "originally when came to country" or at some time one way, was legally changed or some other way changed. So exactly what to call it I am not sure. But basically like the idea. Perhaps a field for "Earlier last names" and "current last name" for those still living, "last known (or used) last name" for those deceased.
Definitely against the idea of limiting last name field to only Birth name. This often misspelled on Birth Certificate, or no birth certificate so no proof of original, or if immigrated to US, may be unknown, etc.
Philip, I agree. I wish these fields: First name, Middle name, Last name and Other names, where the last one has options to add differnet names through a persons life. Last name should ofcourse allways be a persons name at birth.
I will have a problem finding my ancestresses if there is not a searchable field for husband's name or name at death. I will have a problem distinguishing one ancestress from another if they have no "last name" reflected in a database of 52 million names. So I am holding off on voting for this proposal until I see a "name at death" or "alternate name" proposal in this feature database.
Ultimately if a program is not useful in building my family tree, sadly, I can't use it.
First name, Middle name[s], Last name and Other names ???
First name and last name are fine but I find that a lot of people have more than one ‘middle name’ - thus it has to be plural.
‘Other names’ can lead to mis-use of the system.
‘Last name’ should be the ‘Birth Name’ = the family name or the surname at birth.
A new field should be added for “AKA” [Also Known As] as there are a lot of us [including myself] who do not use or are not known by the first name and even those who change the names around { who do not use their first name} and those who have an official name change other than by marriange. Or those whose names change with language. There are many more reasons for a person to have used a diferant name.
I do not agree that Last Name should be equal to name at birth. Last Name is always current name for living people and name at death for deceased people. Remember that Geni is also a tool to socialize with living people. I like that as it is now.
Some men DO have a maiden name: I have a friend who was called Martin Smith for most of his life, then he married and took his wife's surname: he is now Martin Lau. So his last name is Lau and his maiden name is Smith.
The maiden name field should be available for men as well as women.
I think that "Birth Name" is a must.
At birth you are registered with your first name(s) and a family name. Therefore the field "Birth Name" is a valuable tool to find a person in an archive.
When you are married (in a lot of countries it doesn't matter if you're male or female) you MAY use the family name of your spouse, mix it with yours, or keep using your own family name. I don't know how it is on other countries, but in The Netherlands, when you marry someone, the family name in your passport doesn't change, there will only be an addition stating who your spouse is.
Also, a person can decide to change his or her family name, for whatever reason. If that person dies, the family name differs form the birth name, so a field "Last known name" is also required. This can also be used for people who use the family name of their adoptive parents.
The "Married name" is not really necessary, since the person is linked to a spouse from which the family name can be read. The search algorithm must off course use all name fields from a profile AND all linked spouses to look for a person.
i would suggest
first name
middle name(s)
birth name
last name - which is the current name for living persons, or the last name before death for deceased people
if the person for example had several husbands (and last names), in my opinion, it is not important to list all the last names the person had, the first and the last one are the most important ones, others can be mentioned in "about"-tab
I agree 100% with Sabina's comments.
I was reading the discussions in http://help.geni.com/entries/432163-husbands-name-should-not-be-default-maiden-name and asked about definitions there.
It seems the me people use the same label (last name / maiden name) for different things. I have been looking but I do not think Geni defines it names fields or what should be put into them. If there are definitions and rules it would be very nice to have a link to them in these discussions.
Job - have you seen the Public Discussions on this topic, for example: http://www.geni.com/discussions/86784
Loi,
I had not seen it, but looking at it, seems to confirm that there is need for definitions for and rules how to used the name fields on Geni.
The words "Maiden Name" are not reeplaced to "Birth Surname" at all Geni pages/texts!