Language used in Family Search
If one has designated their language as English, is it not correct that they should expect the names of their historical ancestors to be in English? Examples:
William The Conqueror 9H17-VTZ his names changes now and then to something completely different
Louis I LZT6-KB5 Hludowic I. König des Fränkischen Reiches und Römischer Kaiser
Charlelmagne LZ62-TSV Karolus 'Magnus' Rex Francorum Imperator Romanorum
Best Answer
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You are correct. At this point in time there is only one name field used in the Vitals section and the name that shows is the last name entered by anyone. The language tag you can set when entering the name only affects the format of the name (last name first, last name last, extra fields for non-Roman, such as Cyrillic, forms of the name) It has no effect on what name shows.
It would make for an interesting future feature if the language setting for the website interacted with the language tag and it was possible to enter a person's name in different languages and have that language show as appropriate. However, I doubt this would be a high priority for programmers since this feature would be useful for probably less than 0.0001% of the people in Family Tree. The thousands of my wife's rural Norwegian ancestors had only one name in one language and there is absolutely no reason to make up a fake English version of their name.
Regarding your other point, since Family Tree is a collaborative tree that we all work on together, we do all need to learn how to work together. Looking at you example of William the Conqueror, I see that his name has been edited 32 times since July 1 of this year. I must say this is the silliest waste of time I have ever seen. Does it really matter what name is under Vitals as long it is obvious who he is? Just put all the names he was ever known by in as alternate names and all of you go do some useful work.
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Answers
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HI @LenoreAkerson1, you have asked if you should see only Roman characters for names in Family Tree if you have designated your overall language for FamilySearch as English.
Actually, that will not always be the case. If you go to the Edit link for the name of an ancestor who is in Family Tree, you will see that you can select a language which you would like for the name to show. The two following knowledge articles might be helpful to explain how this is done.
Any contributor can change how the name displays, and this might explain why you see changes for the same ID numbers over time. Keep in mind that when a name change occurs, it will appear in All Changes in the Latest Changes for the record. Distant ancestors usually have names or titles changed frequently because they have so many descendants. To review how to use the Latest Changes, we have provided an additional knowledge article.
We appreciate your question and hope you will find the information we have provided helpful. Since this concern is really related to the records you are seeing for your ancestors who are part of Family Tree, we will be moving this discussion to the Family Tree Category in the Community. This will allow others who may have a similar question to find the discussion. Please don't be alarmed when this shows as Closed in the FamilySearch Community category after the move. It will remain open and active in the Family Tree category so others who are working in Family Tree can make additional comments.
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This did not answer the problem.
Why should FS allow a version of a name for an historical person be unreadable when they have selected English for the language. If a person wants to see the name in German or Russian, then they can select that language; however, if the language showing is English, then the name should be shown in the manner most English speaking people know that person.
I have chosen English - even under Edit for a given name - however, for King Louis I LZT6-KB5, a contributor continues to put in the name as
Hludowic I. König des Fränkischen Reiches und Römischer Kaiser
The same is being done for Charlemagne and William The Conqueror, as well as others.
I don't want to change the name every other day. I don't want to fight with another contributor. But the World knows them by their English names. So if the English language has been selected, then the name should appear in English - however, that is not always the case.
Lenore Akerson
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For what it is worth, here are the titles of just a few of over 140 different language Wikipedia articles about Charlemagne:
Karl der Große
Carlomagno
Charlemagne
Carlo Magno
카롤루스 1세 마그누스
Карл Великий
Carolus Đại đế
查理曼
קארל דער גרויסער
Karlos I.a Handia
Carlemany
Böyük Karl
Siarlymaen
Carulu Magnu
Karel de Grote
Karolus la Granda
Carlos Magno
Charles I (gazik ke Franca)
So, on Family Tree, one conventional practice is to give the person's name as it appears in the majority of historical records attached to the profile. Another is to give the person's name as the person rendered it themself.
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For possible future language localization, it would be necessary to correctly assign the language of each Alternate Names field, as appropriate. For example, on the name Karl der Große set the language to German.
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@dontiknowyou, thank you so much for the screen shot which verifies that we can select a specific language other than English as we enter names into Family Tree. You example of option for a person's name were also very helpful.
While it may be true that those in English-speaking countries know famous monarchs in history by English versions of their name, FamilySearch is available in many countries of the world that do not speak or understand English, therefore, we are happy to provide a way to allow a name to appear in a format that might be more correct for the country which there were from, or a language that is more familiar to them.
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