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Name fields!

Remi Trygve Pedersen

February 25, 2011 14:41

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In accordance to how genealogists write names in a genealogical database, i propose these fields:

1. First name (all first names)
2 Middle name (middle names like patronymicons)
3 Last name (genealogists always use name at birth as last name, Geni should also adopt the way most genealogists do it around the world.)
4. Other names/Name variations (all other names a person is known by in a persons life)

These are the only name fields Geni should have. "Other names" should include a dropdown menu that has a lot of options of name variations, like Married name, Name in census, Also known as, Farm name, and a lot of others. This should be according to gedcom-standards and searchable in all namefields on Geni. This should also be in accordance to offline genealogical database programs.

As a genealogist, this is what I would except to find in a genealogical program, which Geni is.

Look at suggestions in this discussion from date 23.2.11 3:15 by me and onward. http://www.geni.com/discussions/86784?msg=679384

 

19 comments

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  Dave K. February 26, 2011 00:07

  While I agree with this suggestion in concept, the reality is that the current "Maiden Name" field in Geni is more purely used for  names at birth than the current Last Name field. To implement this suggestion, careful thought must be applied when migrating the data that already exists in those two fields. I am opposed to just discarding any existing fields or data.

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  Remi Trygve Pedersen February 26, 2011 15:59

  Agreed, David. Geni adm must be careful in what procedures they use to migrate data. Todays "Last Name" is at the moment used as field for a last name a person used some time through his/her life. Todays "Maiden Name" is, when used, used for maiden names. A lot of the times this maiden name field is empty. But I think we can come to a consensus on how to approach this problem and therefore find the best solution.

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  Harald Tveit Alvestrand (Tveit) February 27, 2011 10:18

  Remi, for completeness, can you give the GEDCOM codes you want those fields represented as? I'm extremely nervous about changing interpretation of data, and want to have at least one external independent reference for what you want to change them to.

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  Remi Trygve Pedersen February 27, 2011 14:29

  Harald, I am not too knowledgeable about gedcom files, but here are all of the gedcomtags for names that my genealogical program makes:

  1 NAME Firstname  /LASTNAME/
  2 _AKAN Testus (Also known as)
  2 NICK Nickname
  2 _SHON Short name
  2 _ADPN Aopted name
  2 _HEBN Hebrew name
  2 _CENN Census name
  2 _MARN Married name
  2 _GERN German name
  2 _FARN Farm name
  2 _INDN Indian name
  2 _FKAN Formal name
  2 _CURN Current name
  2 _SLDN Soldier name
  2 _FRKA Former name
  2 _RELN Religious name
  2 _CALL Called name
  2 _INDG Indigenous name
  2 _OTHN Other name
  
  

  NAME is the main one where the name in brackets /LASTNAME/ should be the last name at birth. Also notice that there is a tag for married name.

  Other nametags i know about is:

  ALIA = Alias (An indicator to link different record descriptions of a person who may be the same person.), GIVN = Given name (A given or earned name used for official identification of a person.), SURN = Surname (A family name passed on or used by members of a family.),

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  Terry Jackson (Switzer) March 02, 2011 23:20

  I have supported this proposal however looking more closely I would say that the current maiden name field should be retained (possibly renamed to apply to males as well as females) and a further name field with the drop down menu, as suggested here,added creating a total of 5 fields.

  i.e.

  1.First name

  2. Second name

  3. Birth last name

  4. last name

  5. also known as  (drop down menu: nickname, naturalised, deed poll, census, etc)

   

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  Glenn Østen Hillstrand March 04, 2011 20:59

  Remi, all gedcom tag that start with underscore is not a "standard" gedcom tag, but a tag that many genealogy software companies have agreed to use.

  Many that you have listed are not in my software, and I would get problem if I import gedcom with those.

  As an example, when you export Gedcom here at Geni, marriage has _MAR as GEDCOM tag while standard is MARR.

  Because Geni have chosen to use nonstandard tag, I always get an “error” when I do import gedcom from Geni

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  Remi Trygve Pedersen March 06, 2011 23:30

  Glenn, I know that tags starting with an underscore are not standard gedcom tags, but most genealogical programs use a lot of nonstandard gedcom-tags at the moment. Though I'm saddend to see that Geni use _MAR for marriage when MARR already exists as a gedcom standard. Maybe we should try to get them to change that.

• 0
  
  Liivi Murumets March 08, 2011 03:44

  Name display settings can be adjusted to show maiden name instead of last name. 

  http://www.geni.com/account_settings/name_preferences/

• 0
  
  Remi Trygve Pedersen March 08, 2011 16:28

  We know that, Liivi, and it's beside the point. Read point 3 in the proposal on more time.

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  Liivi Murumets March 11, 2011 10:56

  Well, people who are so fond of using only maiden names, should join myHeritage - as soon as you select Female, the only choice for a surname is Maiden name. 

  In my opinion it is wrong for many reasons:

  A. it assumes a female always wants to get married

  B. it assumes a female always wants to change her name

  C. it assumes there is only one way to change a name after marriage:

  1.  name of new spouse

  ignoring:

  2. old-new

  3. old new

  4. new-old

  5. new old

  6. name blending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_and_maiden_names#Name_blending

  And 'old' is not necessarily maiden name, it can be name of a previous spouse or changed from name at birth for some other reason.

  Oh, and by the way, myHeritage doesn't even let you contact possible profile matches without paying.

  
  
  
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  Sharon Doubell March 16, 2011 09:34

  Exactly, David

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  Mike Ekberg April 14, 2011 20:43

  There is a common situation I have run into recently which I hope this proposal will help. The issue is that within a set of generations, a family name changes from one name to another, related name. My generic example would be my ancestors on my Peasley side. All of the relatives I knew of before geni.com were named Peasley. My mother had traced the ancestors back a ways, but had named them all Peasley. I entered a bunch of them that way. That was kind of naive in retrospect. So I had been searching for 'Peasley' matches, didn't find many. It would have been nice if Geni had popped up and said, hey, maybe I have matches for these people, you don't need to type them all in. Preventing problems from being created is better than coming up with better fixes once they occur.

  Recently I realized that when the Peasley line started, they generally called themselves 'Peaslee' or even 'Peaslea'. This was back in England. At some point, after crossing the Pond, they began calling themselves 'Peasley'. So I have been trying to merge up the various lines of Peasley/Peaslee/Peaslea, which I and others have entered with the different spellings.

  It would be nice if the AKA entry could differentiate between nicknames and alternate spellings.

  Also, after seeing several tombstones on findagrave.com, I am coming to the conclusion that the persons 'real' name should probably be the one on their tombstone, if they have one, otherwise a death record somewhere. I don't know if that is standard or not, but it is probably what they wanted to be known as, or at least what the surviving family wanted them to be known as. So in the case of Nathaniel Peaslee, Jr, his tombstone says that exactly. His real name is not Peasley.

  For example, my grandfather was Orville Oscar Peasley, but was generally known as 'Orv'. It would be nice if searching would find him if someone entered 'Orv Peasley', 'Orville Peasley', or 'Orville O. Peaslea', even though at that point in time, all the Peasleys standardized on that spelling. [I know about the sound-like search, but I doubt if most users know about it or use it.]

  Sometimes the middle name is a useful differentiator, if a first name is common is a tree. In the MONTAGUE line, there are several William Montague, William Montagu, William Montacute's. I haven't found middle names, but that would help in merging among multiple trees and generations.

  The same issue is involved in the Montague, Montagu, Montachute, Montacut, Montacuto lines; as I am sure everyone is aware, there are many cases of such as this. (Don't get me started on my Swedish side, where after a while I have Per Larsson -> Lars Persson -> Per Larsson etc. Trying to find a unique Lars Persson is like a needle in a haystack.)

  I would also suggest a feature that could be enabled, which would add the birth-death dates automatically in all displays of name. For example, in searching for another person to merge a profile with, it would be useful in cases where multiple names in the tree are the same, to have the name displayed as, e.g. William 1210-1275 Montague, without someone actually entering that as the person's name or nickname, which I have seen in some MPs. Although in his case, with the extra fields, it would probably be more like: William 1210-1275 "Willy"  [Montacute] [Montagu] Montague. (Notice I used brackets to indicate the optional naming, and I made up a nickname in quotes. The extra names and dates could be turned off, so his name reverts to William Montague, or William 1210-1275 Montague or William "Willy" Montague. Montacute and Montagu would go into a 'alternate family name' GENI field, which I suppose would be exported in OTHERNAME genicom field. Willy would go in NICKNAME. (This is not just for 'tree' display, but would be useful when searching for merge names, and comparing merges.) There is no reason GENI cannot call field something that is more descriptive, like "Alternate family name", while exporting it combined with other fields into a common format like gedcom.

  GENI could also track alternate family names, and suggest, when someone entered a common alternate name, would the user like to add the alternate nameing, and suggest some. (Maybe need to think about that, perhaps don't want all Smiths to default to Smith/Smythe, for example.)

  Perhaps someone should propose a 'strawman' mapping from GENI -> gedcom -> GENI?

  mike

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  Fay Elizabeth Baldwin April 22, 2011 10:58

  So...transfer the current 'display name' to a new position...under that, based on surnames of husbands...list married names; then allow place for known as/nickname....etc...with drop downs for so-called exotic things like 'farm name', census name, converted name  from x to y.....with the ability to 'click' which or how many to denote...

   

  All in the column to be searchable....with a place in 'search for OTHER NAMES' where the listing would show

   

   

• 0
  
  Anne M Berge June 07, 2011 19:23

  Fully agree to this suggestion.

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  Drs J.F.Th. (Fred) Bergman June 15, 2011 17:37

  I agree with the points 1, 2, 4.

  Point 3 should be Last name at birth

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  Philip James Decker, Ͼ March 27, 2013 09:07

  Implementing fields that cannot be mapped to GEDCOM 5.5 is unwise.  Middle name is the perfect example.  All other genealogy software places all given names in one field and all surnames in another.  When a Geni profile is exported via GEDCOM, the contents of the First Name and Middle Name fields are placed in the Given Name field, a process that is not reversible.

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  John Martin Perry May 02, 2014 01:20

  My problem is with an ancestor whose husband died and she married again.  How to represent her three surnames?  At birth she was Anne A.  Then she became Anne B (A).  But what's her name after she married C? I use Anne C (B / A) - is that correct?

  Anne's daughter Bess was born Bess B.  Then she adopted the new family name and was known as Bess C.  When she married, she became what?  I use Bess D (C / B) - is that correct?

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  Drs J.F.Th. (Fred) Bergman May 07, 2014 06:53

  For real genealogists there should be no problem, because all profiles has to have as last name the last name at birth! all other variations are time boundedm and without a timeframe not good to handle.

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  Harald Tveit Alvestrand (Tveit) May 07, 2014 07:55

  With the way Geni works today, the only real solution for multiply-married women is to put all their married names in "Also Known As", with commas inbetween.

  Thus, if Firstname Bornname married mr, Firsthusband, mr. Secondhusband and mr. Thirdhusband, she would be named "Firstname Bornname", and the "Also Known As" woudl be "Firstname Firsthusband, Firstname Secondhusband, Firstname Thirdhusband". Having the name at birth in both "Last name" and "Name at birth" makes it clear that the convention of "Last name = Name at birth" was followed.