How to handle unknown names
I think there should be a better statement regarding the problem of unknown names. Often the wife is unknown in old records and people are creating all kinds of entries.
My relatives are Norwegian. Women did not change their names when married.
But there are all kinds of entries with Mrs as the title and the males last name in the wife's last name entry.
I understand that if a name is not known, a PID should NOT be created. I have not found any statement regarding that issue.
However when a PID is already created with a fake name, there are no guidlines on how to fix. There should be recommendations on what to enter since something has to be entered.
Thanks
Karen
Best Answer
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It is generally accepted that the name should be left blank, so you can always detach any relationships with a "fictitious" wife / mother. The exception for many users (especially if they are LDS Church members who have performed ordinances on a family) is where a "?" ID has been created for a wife / mother, prior to the introduction of Family Tree in 2012. We have been asked to leave these alone, in case they have been used (in Temple work) in lieu of a proper mother's / wife's name. Otherwise, take any false / made-up names away from the family and leave the children just under the father.
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Answers
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Thank-you.
One comment regarding the names with a ?.
I have merged tons of these into a proper name. And sometimes a man will have more than one ? wife. And now they are marked unknown.
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Yes, in the past I just detached all these "?" IDs. I found it pain enough merging the ten same "John Smith" individuals (created in an earlier program as one different ID for each of his ten children), let alone merging ten "?" IDs for their mother. Often, the mother still remained unknown, so one of the "?" IDs would still remain (if you did things "properly"), even after all that effort!
I don't quite understand what you mean when you say "And now they are marked unknown", as this should only be the case if another user renamed a "?" as "Unknown". Otherwise (after any merging exercise) there should either be one "?" left, or (if you had been able to identify the spouse) a named individual as the mother. The only other situation would be if all those "?" IDs were detached from the father and his children and there would just be a blank space where the spouse / mother would usually appear.
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It is a bother to have to merge 10 "John Smith"s AND 10 "Jane Doe"s. But, from what I have seen, the reason there are so many IDs created, is that they were created from a set of birth records for a given place.
When the indexer went through the list of births, they had no way of knowing if the current set of parents had any other children. It would have been a gigantic mess if they had tried to combine sets of parents that appeared to be the same. I still grumble a bit at dealing with large families, but it is better than any alternative I can think of.
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