Maybe the Name Meaning pane isn't so great?
As Latter-day saints, we're supposed to set the gold standard for genealogy. We also are an international church now. The idea of making genealogy more appealing and approachable is excellent, but we have to remember who our members are as we do this.
My parents are french and french/norwegian. ALL of my genealogy is outside the U.S. Yet the "Name Meaning" pane of the new Person Page uses a U.S.-based source. Because of this it got the meaning of my mother's surname TOTALLY wrong. I mean, ludicrously wrong. All french genealogists agree on the meaning and that meaning is utterly unrelated to what the "Name Meaning" pane insists it is.
Please. Just remove the pane. Save this excellent idea until we can find an solid source with an international perspective. Otherwise it makes us look like a ignorant, culturally-biased and blind group of people to the eyes of the greatest number of our members.
But I am so grateful to the FamilySearch team for all the hard work they put into this effort. Millions of people, including my ancestors, have been able to benefit infinitely. Kudos and appreciation to you!
Answers
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I'm not LDS, but I agree that the "name meaning" panel of the fluff page is especially bad.
Luckily(?), it never finds anything for my ancestors' names. Sometimes it finds their given names, but even basic and dead-common surnames like Mészáros ("butcher") and Molnár ("miller") are missing from the reference book that's used.
The problem is, a universally-applicable source of name derivations doesn't exist and cannot be written. You have to take the location into account, and even then, there might be multiple unrelated origins for a particular name.
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see also this discussion here
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/457635#Comment_457635
Please read the above link
In my opinion the surname origin pages should be done away with
just replicating a bunch of garbage for the mot part if you ask me
I totally agree -- FamilySearch should be the golden standard -
BUT all that mostly erroneous and fully stereotypical surname origin stuff -- makes FamilySearch look like a bunch of NON professionals
I wish FS leadership would rethink some of their less well thought out practices - that too many times back fire on them.
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