Accept standard place names Family Search has not seen before

Colin Beckwith

On the Home Page of Family Search you ask for help in finding or suggesting 10 standardised place names. As an ex-geography teacher, I love this section. I always check my UK suggestions with the help of the British Ordnance Survey maps on the "Streetmap" web-site. There are occasions when a place name is mis-spelled, for example "Donington-Wood, Shropshire. At the moment the system will not accept a revised spelling or other corrections if they don't appear in the suggestions above. In this case the correct spelling should have a double"nn", i.e. Donnington Wood, Shropshire, England but the system will not accept it and retains the single "n". If you really want help the system needs to be more flexible.

genthusiast

FamilySearch Places database does have this capability for users to contribute corrections/additions. When I view the place: Donington Wood (Parish 1808-TODAY) - the Alternate Names section does include 'Donnington Wood' as a variant name. There are also two timeframes for the place listing 'Chapelry' (instead of parish): https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=10685582&searchTypeaheadInputText=Donnington%20Wood,%20Shropshire,%20England&text=Donnington%20Wood,%20Shropshire,%20England&pagenum=1&pagesize=20#:~:text=Research%20Links-,Alternate%20Names,-Name

You may need to scroll down to view Alternate Names section of the page.

If this is not sufficient - you can use the

to suggest edits to the FamilySearch places team that manages the database.

I suspect you would like the Alternate Name to appear so that you may select it as the place directly. I am not sure why Alternate Names might not appear - perhaps someone else can comment on that - otherwise I suppose if you enter the Alternate Name and do not select the listed name - perhaps the system will link the Alternate Name appropriately (that would be wished - otherwise it would not be as friendly to have to browse each place to see if alternates are listed - in order to select the right listing)?

dontiknowyou

Can anyone tell me how one might join the Places gazetteer development team?

I am constantly finding place names not in the gazetteer and wish I could just edit the gazetteer myself rather than submit an application through the "Improve This Place" process.