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Ethnicity listed in name ? Sierra Leone—Birth and Death Registrations, 1858–2016 [Part C]

KLHub
KLHub ✭
October 29, 2021 edited August 19, 2024 in Get Involved/Indexing

Unfortunately I already indexed a few batches and sent them in, but after thinking about this I recognized that there may be a challenge for individuals who are searching digitized records because of the name fields. If I come across another batch with this challenge, I can tag it on to this message. Here's the challenge. As I was going along, I noticed last names in some instances being similar repetitively but found when I did an internet search I found that what I thought was a last name was actually the ethnicity being listed in the bottom of the name field, for instance, in one case that I recall, it was separated by the person's age which had also been listed which indicted to me that it was not a last name, but the ethnicity. I don't know enough about naming of children in Africa but I'm wondering after some research if the ethnicity is sometimes included in a person's name because I have noticed that often a person's name (such as a parent's name) is quite long making it difficult to identify which part of it should truly go into the first name field versus the last name field. But the instance with the age written separating these two identifiers let me know that I was probably listing the ethnicity of individuals as the last name. The name field does not ask for ethnicity on the forms I am referring to, nor the age, but I have found that in some instances this additional information was being included. There is no way to know in most cases for sure whether the last part in those boxes are part of the name or the ethnicity. I imagine this could pose a challenge for those reviewing the records and subsequently, those searching the records once they are digitized as well.

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Answers

  • LarryClark43
    LarryClark43 ✭✭✭✭
    October 29, 2021

    You re correct, sometimes one or all of the: village, chiefdom, and district are listed in that box. So yes, you do have be careful and study a bit of Geography.

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