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Please can we remove the No Surname Consistency Checker feature on a world tree that goes beyond the 1800s?

Sharon Doubell

July 15, 2025 14:14

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Please can we remove the No Surname Consistency Checker feature on a world tree that goes beyond the 1800s? It causes chaos for the thousands of profiles that existed before surnames.

Until the 1800s, fixed, hereditary surnames were absent or inconsistent across much of the world outside urban Western Europe and China. In Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the Highlands of Scotland, and South India, patronymic systems dominated. Africa, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Indigenous America used clan names, place names, or personal descriptors, with no hereditary surnames until colonial or missionary influence imposed them in the 19th and 20th centuries. In East Asia, only elites had surnames.

Examples of requests to remove the upset caused by this feature since 2020:
https://www.geni.com/discussions/201154?msg=1358260
https://www.geni.com/discussions/201154?msg=1776640
https://www.geni.com/discussions/201154?msg=1776645
https://www.geni.com/discussions/286438?msg=1777455&page=81

17 comments

• 1
  
  Lauri Kreen July 15, 2025 16:39

  Fully agree.

• 2
  
  Ashley Odell July 15, 2025 16:57

  The feature should not be removed; it should be either localized to the profile or turned into a user preference setting. Although there's no question it creates annoyance on many profiles, it has too much value in the "lower tree" in many geographic/cultural areas to get rid of it entirely. It just needs adjustment.

• 1
  
  Patricia Ann Scoggin (Anderson) July 15, 2025 17:00

  I also agree, I have many Scandinavian ancestors and am never sure which name to use as their last name. 

• 0
  
  Hubert de Vos July 15, 2025 18:21

  I fully agree. 
  In the Dutch part of the tree it causes managers to continually fill in patronyms in the surname fields and then the next persons applies those to the generations before and after which at times creates an enormous mesh.

• 2
  
  Ethan David Whitted July 15, 2025 23:48

  Yes, I totally agree with this. It is a super helpful feature in newer profiles (birth dates post-1800s) but gets quite annoying and frustrating on older profiles. I would love for this to detect what the birth date of the profile is and only show the warning accordingly.

• 0
  
  Ashley Odell July 15, 2025 23:58

  Sharon, can you clarify: are you proposing that you want it gone entirely, or that it be gone for profiles pre-1800? I think we have different interpretations going on of the proposal. Thanks!

• 1
  
  Leanne M (Volunteer Curator - Australia) - on walkabout🇦🇺 July 16, 2025 00:17

  In the period I mostly work in I find it useful.

  Perhaps we could narrow when the inconsistency shows.

• 1
  
  Leanne M (Volunteer Curator - Australia) - on walkabout🇦🇺 July 16, 2025 00:20

  https://www.geni.com/discussions/201154?msg=1358375

  In defence of the birth surname check I have found it incredibly useful in identifying wrong merges and children attached to wrong parents.

• 0
  
  Remi Trygve Pedersen July 16, 2025 00:40

  Can we have the checker removed from Birth Surname to, I have more than 1000 inconsistencies and 75% of them is related to lastnames, either missing Birth Surname, missing Surname, children with different last names, siblings share the same first name and birth Surname looks like married name. Most of the inconsistencies under these categories are not inconsistencies and I would prefer that the checker didn't check for them.

• 1
  
  Erica Howton July 16, 2025 01:27

  I agree with Ashley.
  *Please clarify time and place frame.

  I agree with Leanne.
  * Perhaps we can narrow when the inconsistency shows.

  For profiles in English bad-merged after 1550, which is many, it’s been a big help.

• 1
  
  Job Waterreus July 16, 2025 08:02

  Narrowing may be difficult.. How could that be done?

  Maybe split it in 2 separate inconsistencies (one for profiles with birth/baptize location and one for profiles without birth/baptize info).

   

• -1
  
  Cheryl Ann Colling B16 July 16, 2025 13:01

  I agree with Sharon,.
  Remove post 1800's Surname inconsistencies.
  The different cultural use of surnames causes a massive problem!! You can not expect everyone to Know who uses what?
  It is only EXPERT'S who study this that will Know ! Hence getting shouted at when trying to help with cleanup of irritating inconsistencies ???
  Surname should either be called Husband's surname !!!
  Not Wheather Wife USED his name or not!!
  the profile is where one looks to see who married who???
  Not If She Or He for That Matter, USED His Name!!??Her Name!!??
  Most People Want to see maiden name and Married name, as we are all extremely Proud of our family Names!!!
  One Rule suits all??
  keep It SIMPLE!!
  The Inconsistencies Go away on their own ???
  Curators Should enter Information In The Notes if Names are used or not??
  Solves a Massive Problem???

• 0
  
  Sharon Doubell July 16, 2025 13:30

  I'm skeptical about the possibility of restricting the time frame. In the past, requests to adjust features according to reading profiles' dates have been met with an 'impossible to programme'. Were it  to be possible, that would definitely be first prize. 
  
  But second prize is not to keep it because it helps identify mismerges in one specific location, when weighed against the problem that it is actively creating data errors everywhere else.
  
  Surely this isn't the only way of detecting mismerges on the modern American tree? 
  If the choice is 'helping to find mismerge errors while actively creating other errors', then, to my mind, that function is  ultimately degrading the world tree, and should be removed. 

• 0
  
  Job Waterreus July 16, 2025 14:03

  The inconsistency checker reads the profile data to be able to flag an inconsistency, so reading the birth/baptize date should not be a problem. The location is more of a problem. When fixed last names where introduced depends on the location but being that specific will be difficult, so probably not really practical. Maybe a country list with earliest year the inconsistency can use would be possible. That could reduce the number of wrongly indicated inconsistencies. (country list could be maintained by the curators)

  Geni may be able to add additional languages for the country names (there can be at lot of variation in the country name [like Nederland, The Netherlands, Netherlands,...]) 

• 0
  
  Ashley Odell July 16, 2025 14:09

  Sharon, I don't think it's just one location; we have users in Australia, multiple Anglophone Caribbean countries, Canada, the U.S., and probably others who utilize it and have said they would be worse off with it gone. And while those may be few in terms of places, they're many in terms of users and profiles, so we need to strike some sort of balance IF possible.

  I like where Job is going with his thinking. I also like the idea of making it a user preference, which has been proposed numerous times and might be much easier to program.

• 0
  
  Sharon Doubell July 16, 2025 14:47

  I think very few modern profiles don't have at least one Surname - so just a modern date range - after 1800?  should be enough to prevent most of the incorrect Consistency prompts about no surnames.

• 0
  
  Cheryl Ann Colling B16 July 18, 2025 05:48

  Waiting for an outcome ?
  My finger is on pause !
  Thousands of Ignors under its belt !

  Regards Cheryl