Correct Name to put in the person field....
I know many of us deal with this and would like some ideas. Most of us have ancestors who crossed the pond from Europe. They were given a name at birth and later in life made their way to the USA. In many cases their name was changed in the immigration process. Then death records and headstones were eventually created with a name that is completely different than the original birth name. If you are fortunate enough to know the new surname--Which name is the correct name to put in the person field and which name goes to the Alternate Name field? In a program that allows anyone to change information it turns into a tug of war as to who's right. It also makes it difficult if you have to use the FIND feature. Italian, German, and Scandanavian names are hard to track especially if you don't know what the surname change was. It also trickles down through the childrens name who came over with mom and dad. It should be consistent. ANY IDEAS?
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Personally, I like to enter the name that the individual had at birth. I then enter nicknames or name changes as alternate names in the "Other Information" area.
As far as searching goes, I search for the name that they could have gone by during a specific time frame one at a time. As I enter each search in my research log, I can keep track of which variations I have tried. I know some like to add alternate names in the search terms.
I think things like this often come down to personal preference. Maile 🙂
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To add one more point, if you add all the name variations to the Alternate Names section, when you use the FamilySearch search link on the right side of the page, up to four alternate names are automatically filled in for you and all of them are used in the search. In the example below, I did not fill in or modify any of the search criteria.
The first five search results are all records for her with three different surnames. This can work quite well.
I'd also vote for having the name in Vitals be the person's birth name unless there is a very good reason not to and have all other names as Alternate Names. However I wish we could have the Vital section split into two with a Names section and a Vital section with just events. And that each user could mark a preferred name just like we can set preferred parents.
I have only run into two situations where there was a tug of war over names. I just didn't think was worth arguing over the issue so I didn't press my case. One was with a woman who refuses to use anything other than a patronymic for Norwegians in the Vitals section, even for those that had an additional surname. The other was a man whose mother clearly remembered what her uncle's name was from when she was a child and he was 50. He was certain that that his great-uncle's name was always and only the name he used when he was 50 even though birth records contradicted this. So his name as an adult is in the Vitals section and his birth name is there as an alternate name.
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Excellent points made above by all the contributors to this thread. I particularly like Gail's examples.
My own, "more simple" examples bear out the fact there can be no hard and fast rule and that the name inputted in the Vitals section does not have to be the "birth name". Indeed, in many cases we will never know what our ancestor's birth name actually was!
Had it not for my maternal grandmother's first hand account, I would not have known why her intended name (Mary Ann) was recorded as "Mary Ellen" by the registrar. Apparently, her mother had a fairly broad Scottish accent and the (English) registrar, having misheard her, refused to change her first names to "Mary Ann" once he had entered "Mary Ellen" in the register. So, I have always recorded her "birth name" as her parents intended it to be (and Grandma insisted it should be), rather than how officially recorded.
In another example, an ancestor was baptised with the surname of his father, but his parents appear never to have been married and he is always found thereafter in the name of his mother. (From other records, it appears he probably did not know of his illegitimate father until late in life and believed his biological parents to be his maternal grandparents.)
Also, I have had cases of the baptism name being different from the one found on the birth certificate. Again, how can one tell the intended "birth" name? In one case, the first names were as different as "William" and "George", so did the parents change their minds about what to call him, or (there being no further documentation found relating to him) does one entry involve a straightforward error?
I agree with what appears to be the consensus here: in general, input the birth name (if there is clear evidence of what that was!), but also feel free to record the name your relative was known by throughout most of their life, if that appears to more appropriate to you.
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Adding to Maile's comment, the Find routine looks at all of the names entered on a profile. This means that whether you enter the birth name in Vitals and the naturalized name under Other, or the other way around, a search for either name should bring up the profile.
I just noticed something: Find always labels the search result with the version of the name that matches your search terms. For example, if I search for "Ferencz Hargitai", Find shows the profile name as Hargitai Ferencz, but if I search for "Ferencz Ruzicska", then it labels it Ruzicska Ferencz (entered as an Also Known As), with no sign of Hargitai. Similarly, if I search for "Ferencz Bodicsi", then it labels the Find result as Bodicsi Ferencz (entered as his birth name). In each case, I have to go to the profile to see the other names.
In other words, it really doesn't make much difference where you put each name; each researcher will find it under whatever name he looks for. The genealogical convention is to give primacy to birth names, unless there is compelling reason (such as adoption or legal name change) to do otherwise; for Mickey Hargitay's father, I went with his "adult" name because as far as I can tell, he never actually used his technically-birth-name. (There were all sorts of complications about his and his siblings' legitimacy and their adoption by their probably-actual father.)
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What name to use does not have a standard rule, in my opinion. Saying that one should always use birth names is wildly wrong in specific instances and correct in others. Below are a garden variety of scenarios in my family dealing with name change and my thought process on which to use.
Legal name change. Birth names, in my opinion, should never be used as the primary if the name was legally changed. My husband's grandfather Harry - and his whole family - changed their name in 1924 from Chiouchias to Thompson during naturalization. My mother-in-law was born Chiouchias but was 7 at the time of her name chage, and later on had her birth certificate amended to show Thompson. To show her as Chiouchias is wrong, even though it was her birth name. Alternate names showing Chiouchias (and other spellings) are on their records.
Adoption. I have a slew of adopted relatives, all of whom had their names changed when adopted as infants. This is when I most emphatically believe legal name should be used. One of them has passed, and her death certificate has her legal name and adopted parents. I do not have an alternate name for any of my adopted relatives, just their legal names. When a person was adopted as an infant, all records for their entire life will have their legal name except for their original birth certificate. It is very important to use legal name here if you want to research their adult lives AND if you want any one to actually know who you are talking about. Having said that, I have linked them ALL to their birth mother and birth father. That will provide some of the family surnames in the bloodline.
German names, 1600-1700s. Then there are older cases - my German ancestor who arrived in the 1720s whose name appears spelled using every permutation possible. His record is popular among his descendants. Lots of us tinker with it. I just counted. He has 15 alternate name records. I've never felt motivated to take a stand on that one.
Polish names, 1800s. A brother-in-law's family are Polish. For every generation that lived in the US I use as primary what was on the death cert. My assumption is that was how they were known to their families. I do not have reliable information to know a birth name for several generations, and all generations seem to have varied the spellings. Even my brother-in-law himself had an official name change to tweak the spelling.
Then my favorite, hiding from the first spouse. One man in my tree (who will remain anonymous to protect the innocent) abandoned his wife and 3 small children around 1926. He remarried several years later and both he and his 2nd wife took new names. He was a tough nut to research, and that guy gets his birth name listed and the other is alternate. Same for his wife.
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Great points and suggestions. My own research has it’s share of “what’s his name now” persons.
”In general, enter the birth name in the Vitals section of the Person page. Enter other names, such as nicknames, in the Other Information section. Legal name changes are an exception.”
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Thanks for all the great comments. A birth certificate, headstone, and a myriad of other documents through ones lifetime can make researching interesting. It makes looking for sons names like Robert, William, Eugene, Thomas, Theodore, James, etc. a piece of cake. I plan on using my birth certificate name on my headstone when the time comes.😊
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@Gail Swihart Watson's excellent examples just reinforces my wish that the very artificial division between a person's "real" name that goes in Vitals and all their other names that go in as "alternate" names needs to be done away with. As with other attempts in the past to enforce one size fits all standards, such as PAF's requirement that place names could only have four parts and each part could have a maximum of 16 letters, setting artificial standards for what name to use and how to spell it just does not work. Real history is just not that tidy. Is my wife's great-grandmother's name Brita, Bretha, Britta, Britha or Berthe? The only accurate answer is, "Yes."
Computer systems have advanced very far from the days when all dates had to be entered like 25 MAR 1935 to today when we can put a date in Family Tree in any format we need to. Likewise Family Tree has gone a long ways to treating all the names the same in the search and find routines. They just need to take one step more and give equal footing, by displaying all of them together, to all of the names.
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And what about famous persons? My habit has been to put the name generally known by in the Vitals section (stage name, pen name, name known by at death) and make sure the birth names in both language forms (Norwegian for example and English as I am an English speaker) where appropriate and other alternate names in the Alternate Name section. I would put Mark Twain in Vitals and Samuel Clemens in Alternate Name as birth name. I would also add a comment in Vitals noting that it was his pen name and possibly a note that he was commonly known as Mark Twain. Same for actors, writers, musicians, etc.
In general, I feel the Vitals should be the name known by at death since the birth name, if different, can always be put in Alternate Names. One shouldn't fall into the trap of feeling the parents and children must be displayed with the same name. If I am looking at Mark Twain and see his parents and siblings with Clemens I don't get all upset.
This applies to doctors, lawyers and military killed during service and retired career military. If I put Dr Smith in Vitals it certainly doesn't mean they were born a Doctor nor was Brigadier General Whosits born with medals on their chest which would have been very uncomfortable for the mother.
Vital: Dr John M Smith or Dr Alice Brown-Smith or Dr Marko Helberg
Alternate (birth): John Markham Smith or Alice Elizabeth Brown or Marko Helberg
Alternate (aka): John M Smith MD or Alice Brown-Smith DDS or Marko Helberg PhD
Alternate (aka): Johnny Smith or Allie Brown/Allie Smith or Mark Helberg
Doctors (all sorts) use the general convention of Dr or post-nomial degree but never both. Note also that health professionals must by law use the name they are licensed under so Alice Smith nee Brown registered with the dental board as Alice Brown-Smith and must use that name professionally.
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Married surnames however go in Alternate Names as married unless there is a reason for something else.
If Dr Alice Brown-Smith took Smith as her married surname that would go in Alternate as married. If Dr Alice Smith nee Brown registered as Dr Alice Smith then Alice Brown goes in Alternate as birth name.
If we take the doctor out of it though then birth name goes in Vital and married surname goes in Alternate.
I guess I'm saying here, if you don't have a professional name, use Vital = birth name and Alternate = married/other. If you do have a professional name then Vital = professional name and Alternate = birth/married/other. Prince and Kanye West/Ye come to mind here.
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