I have a question regarding Standardizing a place name that is not available on FamilySearch

Kristine Alvey Burningham

I have ancestors that are part of the French speaking Waldensian's from the Piedmont Valley in Italy. When trying to standardize the place name for "Torino" (Italian way of saying Turin), there are no options for choosing "Torino". Turin is a modern standardized place for the time period during the 1800's. Torino is not an option at all, but all my ancestors records prior to mid 1800's say they are from Torino. Should I just not standardize the place name?

Gordon Collett

You should always standardize place names. But you need to understand what standardizing means when FamilySearch uses the word. Standardizing means to link the correct place name with the most appropriate entry in the very incomplete Places database of standardized versions of names.

For In your example, correct standardization would be:

To do this, type out the full place name then choose the top line of the drop down menu which will be exactly what you typed. Then make sure the proper standard is entered. In this case, it is.

The place name as entered above is fully and correctly standardized.

Each standard place name has one display value and multiple variant forms of that name. Using any of the variants will trigger linking to the correct standard. You can see them for Turin here: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?searchTypeaheadInputText=turin,%20italy&text=turin,%20italy&focusedId=433060

You can suggest improvements for Turin by clicking on that link on the right hand side of the page just under the map.