Add proper support for Latin language and Roman names
1) Many old church records have names registered in Latin, for which we can currently only select "Other".
2) Given the presence of many ancient Roman names in the family tree, one glaring issue is that there's no proper support for all the components that made up these names, as illustrated here, for instance: https://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/roman_names
As a result, many people cram everything into the first name field. Hardly ideal.
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@BobDeblier Your link didn't work for me because although the text of your link is correct, the URL connected to it is simply that website's base address. This one should work better: https://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/roman_names
The topic of names is certainly a tricky one, with so many different languages, cultures, and customs around names. FamilySearch can't possibly give detailed support to every possible name convention through the millennia around the world. So whatever is done will be some sort of compromise.
When you enter a name, you should do your best to follow the guidelines: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-to-enter-names-in-family-tree
In the case of Roman names, I would hope that people would enter the praenomen in the first names field, the nomen and the cognomen in the last names field, and then the agnomen (if present) in a separate alternate name of type Nickname or Also Known As. It's true that there is no specific language template for Roman, so you would have to choose Other, but that's true for the vast majority of languages in the world.
It's certainly fine for you to make this suggestion, and perhaps parts of it might be perceived by the appropriate product manager as worthwhile to implement. If that were to happen, I really doubt that specific support for the particular Roman name parts would be done, but perhaps a language template for Latin might be done. In any case, it's important to do the best we can with the tools we have now, while still hoping for additional capabilities in the future.
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I agree that it would be Really Nice to be able to label a given name that's in Latin as Latin, but if the template changed the fields to the Tria Nomina, it would render it useless for genealogical purposes. Medieval and modern Latin documents do not record names in that format.
If you're actually working on Gaius Julius Caesar's genealogy (which I'm sure people do, although I haven't looked), you'll just have to make do with putting the praenomen and nomen in the "first name" field, and the cognomen (and agnomina) in the "last name" field. If you set the language template to any of the surname-last Latin-alphabet languages (Other, English, German, French, Spanish, etc. etc.), the name will display correctly, and that's how most people will use the search fields, so your person will be findable.
I make extensive use of FS's language template options, but that's because my family tree is heavily Hungarian, and we put the surname first. However, I'm not sure what purpose it serves to change the template from Other to, say, English: what's the difference? Is there some hidden feature (or planned future update) that actually uses the language label from all of the identical templates?
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Quoth Alan: "In the case of Roman names, I would hope that people would enter the praenomen in the first names field, the nomen and the cognomen in the last names field".
No, I don't think that would work. People searching for Julius Caesar will inevitably put Julius in the "first name" field and Caesar in the "last name" field. (Most people haven't a clue that he had anything to do with the name Gaius.)
Of course, the question is greatly complicated by the fact that "Roman" covers way too much time and territory for any sort of uniformity. What was true in 300 BC had very little to do with what was true in 30 AD. Luckily for FS, it's all largely moot, because Romans and their naming practices are completely irrelevant to the purpose of recording the ancestors of people living today. There is no documentable genealogical connection between us and them.
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Whether someone entered the name as Julius Gaius / Caesar or Julius / Gaius Caesar, a search for Julius Caesar would find them. So I don't think it would be a problem. But in any case, as @Julia Szent-Györgyi noted, this seems like a very tangential issue for actual genealogical research.
Latin versions of names sometimes appear in records in the last few centuries in some European countries. But when that happens, they are not following the naming conventions used two millennia ago in the Roman empire, so the name parts would go in the fields for first and last names just fine.
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(Sorry, my nitpicker hat just refuses to come off today: Gaius was his praenomen, so it's Gaius Julius / Caesar versus Gaius / Julius Caesar. The latter likely wouldn't turn up in a search for Julius / Caesar.)
One idea I've ruminated on (especially when working on my few Catholic relatives) is, instead of a Latin template, what if we had an Alternate Name category of "Latin(ized) Name"? It would have the advantage of being visible (unlike the template, which you can only see by editing the name).
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi At least you realize that it's nit-picking. I know the feeling! I apologize for my imprecision regarding the Roman name parts; it's really not important to me, so I shouldn't have weighed in with specifics I'm ignorant of.
As for the suggestion to have a Latin(ized) alternate name, it seems to me that for such a rare case, the existing Also Known As type will work just fine.
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