Conflict: order of names
Most countries use [first name] [last name] in that order. But there are some other countries where [last name] [first name] order is the official order. Luckily, Familyseach gives us the option the specify, how this name should appear on the tree. That is a really nice feature, however, at the same time it also creates a conflict.
CONFLICT: Many older users prefer to keep it simple and keep the English way [first][last] so their complete tree remains consistent, especially when their tree grows over multiple country borders. Imagine such tree, where certain branches are shown with names [first][last] then other branches appear as [last][first].
On the other hand we all understand that newer users are more than happy to use that nice feature and therefore each name they set in the locally legal, approriate and true naming order such as [last][first]. One such example is Hungarian language.
SUGGESTION: allow users to have an option to show names in a preferred order. This way each user could manually override, how they prefer to see the names, regardless what country setting was set for each name.
To make it simple, I would just say, if you use the English version of Familysearch, this option means [first][last]. If you use the Hungarian version of Familysearch, this option means [last][first]. To be honest, maybe such setting should be ticked in as a default for everyone, while also allowing to untick this option as needed. In this case, unticking this option would result to show each name as per the language setting of the name itself (like as it is happening now).
According to Wikipedia, the [last][first] name order is also called Eastern Naming Order, primarily used in East Asian cultural sphere (China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam), as well as in Cambodia, and southern and northeastern parts of India. It is also used in Central Europe by Hungarians.
Comments
-
No upvote from me.
Surname first or last belongs to the language community in which the person lived. To me, this proposed feature seems disrespectful of the deceased.
0 -
Your argument is valid and I agree, on the other hand I also see that many users are confused to accept this.
- Janos Kovacs written in English, or Kovacs, Janos written in an alternative way = expectation from users coming from the Western world, mostly USA.
- Kovacs Janos written in Hungarian = most respectful to the person and its language community. I was happy to update many hungarian names to appear like that, but has been told off by multiple users to stop doing that. Fun fact, but most of them were actually hungarians.
- If this person lived before 1875, when all the baptism/christening books were written in latin: Joannes Kovacs. This sounds quite archaic, but to my knowledge, no one ever called this person in real life conversation "Joannes Kovacs".
Since such conflict exists, my proposed solution could be still optional for those who wish to see everything in one way or another. I think giving people the choice is the best possible solution here. Currently, there is no choice and names are subject to be abused by the taste of various users.
3 -
told off by multiple users to stop doing that
More often than not, this reaction is not about *what* you did, but *that you dared to do it.*
Re the Church Latin, I simply attach the historical records and use the German name on the profile, with the German language flag. Ie, I don't put the pseudo-Latin on the profile; there are just too many inconsistencies, atrocious Latin. If there are Hungarian records with a cognate given name I put that on the profile too, as an alternate with the Hungarian language flag.
I can see in future matching the alternate language localizations to the user's language preference.
0 -
Random related thoughts...
Older profiles (i.e. those entered more than a couple of years ago) are in "western" order because that's all that was available. The Hungarian settings on both names and the interface are fairly newish -- I'm pretty sure neither existed yet circa 2018.
I don't want name order to conform to the interface language, because I don't want to see German or English names in Hungarian order. Like most Hungarians, I'm used to, and more-or-less resigned to, seeing our names wrong way around, but "Polster Johann" or "Gunther William" are still jarring to me.
Another reason I don't want name order to follow the interface is that this would negate my work in making people's names reflect what I know about their language/ethnicity. For example, in my great-grandfather's family in what is now Burgenland, I've set his name and his brother's to Hungarian, because they worked in Hungary (as cantor-teachers), but his sister's name is set to German, because I have evidence that she spoke only German.
I agree with dontiknowyou that in many cases, people will object to any change you make. The nature of the change doesn't really make a difference: they feel ownership over the profile, having completely missed (or willfully ignored) the shared, collaborative nature of the Tree.
Not switching the order around based on the interface seems especially important in branches with an unmarked patronymic surname. (I have ancestors with the surname László, for example.) Once the affected profiles have all been edited to be consistent in their name language, it's that consistency that offers the biggest clue about which name is which, and undoing that would not be productive.
I agree that "Joannes Kovacs" never in his entire lifetime ever answered to Joannes. Latin names like this generally belong under Other as alternate names, if that. The exception is if you don't actually know what vernacular name went with the Latin one, such as András or Endre for Andreas. (As another example, I have a Fridericus who predates the 19th century invention of Frigyes, so I have no idea what he was actually called.)
(Nitpick re: the dates for Latin recordkeeping -- some priests stuck with Latin to the bitter end, i.e. well past 1875. In contrast, some priests had a patriotic phase starting in the 1830s or 40s, and ending by 1851; many of them not only switched to Hungarian for the names, but also translated the months into one of the newfangled schemes that were briefly in fashion, such as télhó, télutó, tavaszelő, tavaszhó "winter month, winter-end, pre-spring, spring month". Calvinists mostly stuck with Hungarian throughout, unless they were particularly, um, proud of their Latin learning, while Lutherans switched to German [and That Dratted Handwriting] at the drop of a hat.)
2 -
I support the proposal, this is the default solution on most multilingual sites.
0 -
In my opinion there should be language setup for your profile only, on person forms language setup should be removed, everywhere.
At name editing if you choose hungarian, the system automatically switch names (first place is for family name). Many non-hungarian speaking users switched names because they thought it was filled it on a bad way. This name switches make these persons unsearchable. Any you do it again because another user is coming and modify them. It is a never ending story and took a lot of time to correct it, send a message again about hungarian name filling.
Right now anybody could modify data just to see it on a different language setting and this generate a bad competition and conflict between users.
2 -
proud of their Latin learning
Eye roll. If only they could decline their nouns consistently. I have seen inexplicable variations in a single record book, in a single hand. It appears some recorders were shaky on their Latin. Or perhaps the shaky part was their folk etymology of the origins of all those pesky names. Greek or Latin?! German? Hungarian? None of the above? What to do then?
There was such a mash-up of declensions inherited from each of these languages that, well, who wouldn't get confused?
1 -
@zeeeee, I've been guilty of accidentally entering a name wrong way 'round. It's especially easy to do when working on multilingual families, because the name language defaults to whatever you used most recently -- and because the labels are positional ("Last Names", "First Names"), but the entry fields are switched around when you choose Hungarian. I have to sit there and laboriously think it through: "they don't actually mean last when they say last name. It's just sloppy labeling for surname."
But to make it abundantly clear, I will repeat one of my points from my previous comment: I do not support this suggestion. It would negate my work in entering names in the correct language for the person, and it would result in jarringly-wrong name displays. This second consequence would render the Hungarian interface-language choice completely unusable, and the first consequence would make the Hungarian name-language choice completely pointless.
0 -
This name switches make these persons unsearchable.
First, this confusion exists even in original historical records.
Second, whenever there is a risk of surname and given name being switched at any point in the chain of derivation, a savvy genealogist knows to search for the surname in both fields. So, for example, search on both Czentner Maria and Maria Czentner. Now with alternate name fields provided in the Search and Find tools, we can search both ways at once. Yay!
1 -
Many thanks for everyone's comment so far. It did help me to understand different views on this subject. Here is another more refined approach as an attempt to resolve the conflict with order of names:
- Western users seeing western ancestors: John Doe.
- Western users seeing Hungarian names: if we fully respect how the ancestors used their names: Kovács János.
- Western users seeing Hungarian names: if we allow the slight modification for everyone's better understanding, that the naming order here is different from their common standard: Kovács, János (please notice the comma after the family name).
- Hungarian users seeing western ancestors: John Doe.
- Hungarian users seeing Hungarian ancestors: Kovács János
- Hungarian users who use the English interface of Family search and stick to English naming order: János Kovács (using a special option to always force view of given_name family_name)
To achieve the above, I still believe that user interface settings would be the best approach as it gives you the choice.
Then the debate would move to the next point: how do we determine, if a person was considering himself/herself as Hungarian / non-Hungarian? Place of birth? Place of death? This will be still tricky to guess and leaves too much space for conflict. E.g. German ancestor moved to Hungary and got married with a Hungarian wife, then what: "Joseph Schmied", "Schmied Joseph", "Schmied József"?
0 -
So today I have been acting as a FamilySearch Helper and ran into royal lines. I happily entered names and noticed a quirk with the First name/Last name switched, but did not see this thread - and so ignored it - figuring it was just a coding error and it would fix itself. I noticed names that should have had "history" - and there was none - so I happily continued - all day. Then I went to my account and checked names and they lined up correctly with the proper entries. I went back to the Helpee account and noticed something; The entries showed "Romanian" Instead of "English" for new instance entries. The royal lines have been German, French, Scottish, etc. Not Eastern European. I do not know how the system fuzzy logic decided I needed to go to "Romanian" and and putting "Last Name" as the first entry. Choosing English after the fact did not correct the First Name/Last Name switch. So now I have to practice "Genealogy Repentance" and go back to all those entities and correct them. Or just ignore them and hope they sort themselves out in the Millennium (NOT). This has just caused me to essentially waste a whole day and now that I have discovered the "errors"at the end of the day, I don't know how much more time this is going to take. My bad for not knowing about this "feature".
I found this thread by typing in "First name last name".
So if you just happen to be looking at royal lines and click on a name and see the first and last names reversed, I probably did it. MEA CULPA. Sigh...
I'm guessing now that some of the first name/last name shwitcheroos have been corrected, I will begin to see "History" of other entities for the same people on those lines now, that I was expecting to see earlier.
I learned a piece of sage advice in the office equipment repair field decades ago; "If all is going smoothly while repairing a machine, something is wrong".
0 -
Okay, I'm thinking the FamilySearch fuzzy logic must have discombobulated "Holy Roman Empire" for "Romanian" and flipped my entries from English to Romanian without also changing the "typeface", so I would notice things were about to hit the fan. This is an instance where the system shoots itself in the foot, pretending it knows better than you do and decides to be " helpful". Now if my time was as a paid professional genealogist and this happened to me, I'd be ****.
Note to FamilySearch coders; think of our time as being worth between $35 and $150 per hour instead of as free - and act accordingly.
0 -
I want to give a "hat's off" show of respect for Roland David at the top of this thread and I concur with his suggestion. "tick off" for "Preferred Order" would keep me from getting " ticked off"! ;^)
0 -
Why isn't "surname" used instead of "last name" in English? In Spanish for example, "last name" is "apellido", not "último nombre".
If women have had multiple husbands and they collect surnames as a trophy so they have a bunch of surnames after their maiden name, perhaps that "justifies" "last name", but in genealogy-speak, I will always seek out the "maiden" name as 'their' surname and not go looking just for the last guy they married/buried. ;^)
0 -
@RobertLeighPritchett, I think you must be confused about multiple things here.
Romanian uses the same exact alphabet as English, and puts the surname after the given name, exactly the same as English.
It's Hungarian that does names the other way around -- but still in the same exact alphabet as the one you know.
And FamilySearch imposes no logic, fuzzy or otherwise, to determine the language template for a name. On old entries that predate the existence of the different templates, it's set to "Other" (which behaves exactly the same as "English"); on everything else, it's set to whatever you (the user who enters the name) choose, and it defaults to whatever you used last. (Unless you add a person via Source Linker; then it always sets it to your interface language, i.e. English.)
I concur wholeheartedly about the labels, though. There's something wrong when I'm expected to enter things into a field labeled "last" that comes first, and a field labeled "first" that comes last.
1 -
The monitor for this thread asterisked a word I used in my comments. So now anyone who reads it can use their imagination for what I wrote. I'm just gonna let it slide...
0 -
In Utah English, the folks there use the word "flip" instead of a cuss word (the asterisked entry above was not a cuss word, and not "flip", but the system apparently took it as such as an alternate word for "upset"). The FamilySearch system "flipped" the order around on me and I am suffering the consequences. I was just giving the system the benefit of the doubt by suggesting it used fuzzy logic to screw me up and attempted to give a possible logical explanation for its decision to make things messy. I can screw up all by myself, thank you very much. I don't need help making things worse. I tend to practice "genealogy repentance" on a regular basis. ;^)
Since Romania is closer to the east than Hungary, I figured there might are some border slippage as far as the system logic works with the order of names, since the system turned my name box entries into a non-English option without my knowledge or permission.
I'm "hungering" for a fix, so this misnomered name-entry flippin' doesn't happen to me again.
This name order issue is so "Mortal"! We had different names before we came to earth and from what I understand, we will have different names after mortality as we progress eternally, so this naming logic is temporary glitch in the eternal scheme of things. Genealogy has eternal consequences.
0 -
🤣"There's something wrong when I'm expected to enter things into a field labeled "last" that comes first, and a field labeled "first" that comes last."
A-hah FamilySearch coders are trying to fulfill scripture! That's it!
The phrase the “first will be last; and the last, first” occurs in Matthew 19:30; Mark 10:31, and Luke 13:30.
0 -
Jut so you now, when I went back to correct the royal entries where the first name is the last name is reversed, the entries show last name first and Romanian as the option chosen by the system. I see the ones I "incorrectly" inputted, because they show last name first after I correct them. For it to "flip", I have to change the option from Romanian to English and then all is good with first name being a first name and last name being a surname.
So FamilySearch Coders, it seems that I located a logic bug. Please fix it, since Romania apparently does not follow the Hungary rule for last name (surname) first. And the other "bug" is that the system should never ever switch my entries for new name entries from English - unless I choose to do so.
0 -
@RobertLeighPritchett, "the system" didn't change anything. As I wrote, it uses whichever template you used last. What probably happened was that you saved an edit to an existing name entry on which a previous contributor had chosen Romanian for the language template. This changed your "last used" template from English to Romanian, so all subsequent name entries by you were set to Romanian.
You have, however, discovered a bug or error: the Romanian template does indeed switch the order around, even though it shouldn't. I don't know where to report this error.
(Yes, the western half of Romania used to be Hungary, so about half of the records that people might find for their ancestors in now-Romania are actually Hungarian, and thus have the surname first. But it's a language template, not a country template, and the Romanian language uses names in the usual "western" order.)
2 -
This can prove troublesome...
Someone acted on it as being a good idea at one time and coded accordingly. They apparently did not consider the unintended consequences of their actions. It amplifies my concern about "fuzzy logic".
I "awesomed" you, because I'm "Romanian" in awe at your knowledge and "Hungary" for more.
" What probably happened was that you saved an edit to an existing name entry on which a previous contributor had chosen Romanian for the language template. This changed your "last used" template from English to Romanian, so all subsequent name entries by you were set to Romanian."
0 -
I'm hopeful that the FamilySearch coders are monitoring this thread and acting accordingly and not just asterisking words they think are detrimental to intelligent, civil conversation.
"You have, however, discovered a bug or error: the Romanian template does indeed switch the order around, even though it shouldn't. I don't know where to report this error."
0 -
The forum's forbidden-words-lists come with the forum, i.e. not from FS; I'm not sure there's even anyone at FS who knows what all is on them. (When the Other Relationships section came out, I found that I couldn't post about it, because the word "slave" was blacklisted by the forum software. Someone had to go in and remove it so that we could properly discuss the "Enslavement" category in the new section.) In any case, it's all totally automated, i.e., there's no human being sitting there and replacing "p i s s e d off" with asterisks.
FS's engineers and programmers are supposedly reading things here in the forum, but they so seldom respond that none of us are sure if that's true. And I'm pretty sure that a few comments on a vaguely-related suggestion are not a good way to alert anyone to the error. I'm trying to decide whether to post in the New Person Page group about it -- the language templates are not part of the interface's revision, but engineers have been gratifyingly responsive to our feedback there.
1 -
They also read items posted in the "Suggestions" and I've had limited success for things that got better with time, by posting there.
0 -
Your are so insightful. You figured out my asterisked word! 😜
0 -
Wait a second, THIS is the Suggestions section.
0 -
I sometimes hit the R key when trying for the E key, and I select the language of a name by keystroke rather than dragging the mouse around. And sometimes I don't notice. That means I sometimes choose Romanian by accident.
0 -
I'm a touchpad kind of guy on a Mac. I believe I was able to correct most of the profiles I created yesterday and last night.
0 -
dontitknowyou,
Have you noticed the switch when you get Romanianized? I was just wondering if this **** was a recent observation of inadvertently reversing first and last names.
0 -
s n a f u apparently is not acceptable forum-speak. My bad!
0
