Bug Fix "van Son"

kevinpendleton1

The last name "van Son" should be accepted as a valid last name. FamilySearch needs to handle international naming and not make generic systemwide assumptions that the word "son" shouldn't be in the last name. People are renaming people as "vanSon" to get around the bug, but it would be much better to fix the bug.

Here's the article that explains that "son" is invalid (when it's not):

https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-to-enter-names-in-family-tree

Here's a couple of example records:

On sealing to spouse it says invalid last name, but it's correct and giving appropriate research hints:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/ordinances/9M5Y-2H3

Here's one where someone changed the last name and explained it's due to the bug in the comments:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KD9V-2Z5

Paul W

@kevinpendleton1

I agree these "prohibited names" can really be a pain. I remember having similar problems when searching for an ancestor (at the Essex Record Office, in England) whose name was spelled as "More". I eventually found wildcards were accepted in searches, but had only been able to search on variants such as "Moore" and "Moor" before being told that.

I see that you can get "Van Son" results in a search (see first result at https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.surname=van%20son&q.surname.exact=on), but - I was about to say, "How you can't create an individual with last names "van Son" in Family Tree". However, I just did that!

Perhaps you could be more precise as to where / in what process you are experiencing this problem.