How to Fix Place Names?

MrBlond

Hi,

I've started fixing place-names following the main page tab. Alas, all of the suggested options were also not correctly written. I've tried again and again and all suggestions were absolute mess.

So, I wonder how can I help fixing the places data-base in the site?

Secondly, where actually is shown the standard accepted for this site?

Paul W

You should be able to get the correctly formatted place names you require added by posting your request here. They should be appropriate for the period of time - and in some cases the category - concerned.

For example, for a place in England the formats you might request to be added would be along these lines:

For the city:

Norwich, Norfolk, England (-1801)

Norwich, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom (1801-)

Specifically for a registration district, the date would always start at 1837. If that name has ceased to be used, you would show the period in which it did exist, e.g. 1837-1854.

Up to a few days ago, the "place names team" personnel were visiting this Community group and have been acknowledging any requested changes as they have been implemented. Hopefully, this will continue now "Community" has been updated.

In answer to your final question, when adding a place name in Family Tree, the drop-down will show a pick-list. If the place name (e.g. Manchester) is found in different parts of the world, you need to be specific in your input (e.g. add an England or United States suffix to your input) or the pick-list might exclude any existing, appropriate standard name suggestion, due to there being too many options available in the database.

Gordon Collett

"Where actually is shown the standard accepted for this site?"

Actually, the site does not really have "accepted standards." Place names can be entered in a variety of ways which allows us to be just as accurate and clear as we need to be for our family where ever they might have lived.

What this site does have is "Standardized Values" for place names. As long as whatever we enter is properly linked to the appropriate Standardized Value, all the site functions regarding place names will work properly.

For example, you can easily enter:

Seattle, Washington

1875 West 23rd Street, Seattle, King, Washington, United States

Seattle, King County, Washington, USA

as the actual data you want displayed and as long as these are all properly linked with the standardized value of Seattle, King, Washington, United States, all the matching, hinting, and searching routines will work normally.

A good place to explore these standardized values for place names is in the Places database itself which you can view at: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places

You can learn about this database and various ways to search it in this RootsTech presentation:

https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/rtc2021/session/demo-how-standardized-places-work-in-familysearch?lang=eng

Getting back to your original question, in the tool you are working in to add a standardized value to Family Tree entries that are completely lacking one (without changing the actual text entered by the user) if you cannot see the proper value in the suggested drop down menu, you can completely erase the suggestion and start typing in what you think the standardized value should be then see if it comes up in the menu.

MrBlond

Thanks everybody for the respond!

Yes, I've already submitted a lot of improvements in this section: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places but nothing happened. Is it still in operation?

You now, for some reason many populated places are entered with lower-case letters which is not acceptable. I'd like to correct them instantly.

Secondly, let's establish some standard for the settlements. Now there are:

• populated place
• town
• city
• major city

I'm not including villages and hamlets because they are clear for now.

So, I think it should be cleared once and for all how these description have to be used and how to correct them instantly.

Gordon Collett

Over the history of FamilySearch, the track record for instant, global corrections is pretty poor. Most recently, for example, an indexed batch of records for Åkre parish in Skånevik, Hordaland, Norway were all "corrected" to be Åkre cemetery in Kvinnherad, Hordaland, Norway.

Also, a recent batch of global corrections stripped a lot of places of their standardized value which led to the need for the place name tool you have been working in to put those standardized values all back in.

Where are you seeing place names in lower case letters? Can you post an example ID?

And yes, the Places people are still working hard at improving place names. If it has been over a year since you submitted your request for improvements, you might want to resubmit them. The world is a big place and they have a lot to do.

Also, the Place Standards people will only add or correct the standardized values. They will not make any changes in user entered data in Family Tree.

MrBlond

I guess that some kind of automated transliteration that is installed in the site to turn the Cyrillic names into Latin ones causes most of the place names to start with lower case letters. I came across this when examined some Bulgarian and Russian places.

Here is an example for the town of Omurtag (Омуртаг), Targovishte province, Bulgaria:

https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?searchTypeaheadInputText=omurtag&text=omurtag&focusedId=2152947

Gordon Collett

As usual, concrete examples can really make a difference in answers! That is strange that the name of the town is in lowercase in the actual place name database and it does seem to be the type of thing that should be able to be fixed rather efficiently.

The Places database personnel should be monitoring this group. You might want to post a new topic titled something like, "Please fix capitalization errors in the Places Database" and post a few examples like you did for Omurtag. I would hope that would draw their notice and get such things fixed.

MrBlond

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to do that.

Another error that confuses me is using a third language alphabet for the place names instead of the original or English alphabet for transliteration.

Example:

Tŭrgovishte,  Targovishte,  Bulgaria 

You see, the second name here is the province name which is transliterated correctly in Latin letters. At the same time, the city name is wrongly written with "ŭ" as the second letter. Why is that? This letter is neither Bulgarian nor English.

https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?searchTypeaheadInputText=turgovishte&text=turgovishte&focusedId=2241702

Eduardo Carnalla Gastélum

@MrBlond , I have a similar issue with acute accent marks in Spanish for Mexican places.

The "Help fix place-names" on the main page made the following recommendation:

User-Entered Place:

Cuitzeo Del Porvenir,Michoacan,Mexico

Standardized Place:

Cuitzeo del Porvenir, Michoacán, Mexico

Why not use the accent on the "é" in México when they are using it on the "á"

Recomended would be: Cuitzeo del Porvenir, Michoacán, México in a colloquial manner or

Cuitzeo del Porvenir, Michoacán de Ocampo, United Mexican States

Teeples Jeanine Cardon1

I agree with your suggestion. We see a lot of this type of mistake in Wikipedia - mixing parts of a sentence in English with the foreign versions of the place-names and place-types.

I've taken your suggestion to the team for consideration. I call it "Pick a language and stick to it." We need to provide appropriate text in the official languages of these places with their appropriate diacritics, then we can provide an English version. But we should not mix them. It is confusing.

Thanks for pointing this out.