Tanganikya
The former British colony and later independent country of Tanganikya does not exist in Tree birthplaces. If typed in the birthplace box it brings up the Democratic Rep of Congo and other countries in Africa. The country became independent in 1961 before joining Zanzibar in 1964 to become Tanzania. Can you add Tanganikya to the database please.
Best Answer
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When you submit the suggestion, make sure you've spelled it correctly (as Tanganyika).
Based on the Wikipedia disambiguation page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika), I suspect that the independent country is absent from the list due to FS's five-year rule-of-thumb: jurisdictions that existed for less than five years are generally best combined with whatever came before or after, to avoid overcomplicating the database. However, I agree that both the British territory and the "mainland Tanzania" usages of the name should be available.
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Please see this help article: How do I suggest a new place to FamilySearch Places?
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I wrote to support they referred me here, Africa will do just fine for a birthplace!
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@Stephen Steere We are also users of the website, not Staff.
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There seem to be several missing African colony names.
Some of the dates on those that do exist are wrong. Kenya, for instance, is dated to start from 1963, although it was the name of the British colony beforehand. The independent city of Nairobi in Kenya, however, is dated to start from 1899. Those names are at least in the database and we can ignore the dates.
For those of you who want to use pre-independence names and haven't quite worked out how to do it, this is what I did in the Beta Site...
I managed to set an event to display "Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika" while standardised as "Dar es Salaam, Tanzania", so the situation is not lost. Just ... inaccurate. I did that by first setting it to its current value of "Dar es Salaam, Tanzania" and saving that. Then I altered the place to "Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika" and instead of accepting whatever standard it was attempting to throw at me, I clicked outside the boxes to leave the display set to "Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika" and the standard set to "Dar es Salaam, Tanzania". Other methods are available - that's just how I like to do it. Note that the system is designed to cope with having display and standardised names set to different values. The trick seems to be how much you can alter the display version while keeping the standardised version untouched.
(NB - there are alternate names already in the placenames database that might facilitate what I did, so no promises from me that it'll always work.)
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When support sent you "here" to post your request, they probably meant to send you here: https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/68-familysearch-places which is the group for place name requests and problems and which is monitored on and off by the Places people.
Looking at Tanzania, https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?reqParents=59&reqParentsLabel=Country&reqParentsType=580&includeIsParent=true&primaryText=Tanzania&searchTypeaheadInputText=Search%20Within%3ATanzania&partial=undefined , the counter shows 5000 child places to it but I think that is just the upper limit of what the counter can handle. Picking the first region I see on the list, Lindi and going to it, there are also 5000 child places listed: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=3553&includeIsParent=true&primaryText=Tanzania&reqParents=59&reqParentsLabel=Country&reqParentsType=580&searchTypeaheadInputText=Search%20Within:Tanzania&pagenum=1&pagesize=20
So the true count of places under Tanzania is likely a few hundred thousand. To add a new historical period for each of these to cover when they were all in Tanganyika is going to be a major project for someone if it is viewed as something that adds sufficient value to the database to be worth doing.
It does sound like, however, that Tanganyika should be added as an alternate name for Tanzania. Then you can just type out the full place name using the earlier name, click on the top line of red text, and have it automatically link to the standard which has the current name, as I can do here to link a correct historical name of a farm to the current name of a farm:
Then you can easily enter the pre-1964 name so it displays the way you want it to and still show properly on the map.
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Actually, looking closer, it does appear that having that alternate name available was the original intent because the current list of alternate names includes Tanganika as well as German East Africa. So even now you can type:
Click the top, red line in the drop down menu to set your entry then correct the standard to be Tanzania:
For a place within the country, the default standard will probably usually be correct:
Scanning briefly, it doesn't look like many of the places in Tanzania have time spans so that is not an issue at this point.
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Thanks for all the helpful comments, I want accuracy so for someone born in Tanganyika I do not want Tanzania. I am attempting to put 25 years of my research onto my Family Search tree so that when I pass on all will not be lost. I find the present system difficult with duplicated person records unfriendly and often end up deleting the wrong one and having to input everything again. It is very time consuming but I do a small bit each day and I will gradually learn.
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The entire purpose of Family Tree's dual place name entry system is to give us users an infinite number of accurate place names so that our history can be recorded correctly and also give us the ability to link those accurate place names to a spot on the globe represented by the often less accurate place names of the limited standards list so that the place can display on maps and for the use of the programming routines of Family Tree.
As far as I am aware, entering place names in the database is a manual process and they do not have any automated batch processing system to add historical periods to a place. So while adding Tanganyika as a colony/country that existed from 1916 to 1964 would take a couple of minutes, adding a historical time period of 1916 to 1964 for the few hundred direct children currently just under Tanzania and then the over 5000 children of each of those children, and doing the same with a time period of 1855 to 1916 for German East Africa, and for a time period of unknown to 1854 with an appropriate name for those areas that existed during those time periods and figuring out the founding date of each place listed under Tanganyika so you have the correct starting date for each one would be a lifetime job for somebody. Maybe you could contact the Places people and offer to start the work. Since combining the colony of Tanganyika and the country of Tanganyika would be appropriate and be more than five years of existence, I do agree that Tanganyika should be added to the database.
But if you don't want to volunteer to spend the next few years adding all those place names and don't want to wait decades for someone else to do it or if the Places team does not want all past countries, colonies, and pre-colonial areas added as historical time periods in Africa, then make use of the dual place entry system to correctly enter your place names. I see that Tanganyika is now an alternate place name for Tanzania so you just have to type out full place names as I demonstrated above and link your accurate version to the less accurate standardized list version:
This is not just the system coping with a difference between the user entered accurate place name and the linked standard. It is the proper usage and full intent of the dual place name entry system to provide us users the means to fully and accurately enter any place name we need.
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Just to be complete and to illustrate how much work needs to be done before the database is anywhere close to comprehensive, please allow me to take Akwungwasi as an example. Feel free to quit reading now.
Currently Akwungwasi is in the database with a single entry with place type Populated Place which is a place type that is very non-specific and no longer used by the Places team. So first off that needs to be corrected to a hamlet, town, village, city or whatever is correct. Then the founding date of the place needs to be determined. I have no idea if that is even possible. Lets assume it can't be but was before the Germans came.
So there needs to be a time period of Akwungwasi unknown to 1884. Did Masai exist during that time period? Or does a different parent need to be added for that time period. Did Mtwara exist or does that need to be replaced? What was that area of Africa called during that time period?
Then there needs to be Akwungwasi, ??, ??, German East Africa 1885 to 1915 added. This could actually be multiple time periods if the place levels marked by ??s changed. Looking in Wikipedia I see that Mtwara did not exist until 1971. Prior to that the area was part of Lindi.
Next Akwungwasi, ??, ??, Tanganyika 1916 to 1964.
Next Akwungwasi ??, ??, Tanzania 1964 to whenever Lindi was created.
Next Akwungwasi, ??, Lindi, Tanzania from the correct date to 1971.
And finally the years 1971 to Today need to be added to the current place of Akwungwasi, Masasi, Mtwara, Tanzania.
This needs to be done for all 18 places listed under Masai and any places that should be under Masai but are missing and need to be added.
You can see this is a big, but not impossible, job.
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Accuracy will always be a problem especially when people can input their own information, many have no idea about changes. Invariably information copied from someone elses tree is so often wrong. I have thousands of names to input without considering all the people in my wife's line. Updating the database will be a younger person's job, I am in the latter years of my life, so too much to do with not enough time to do it all.
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Just in the interests of clarity (I hope, but maybe not) @Gordon Collett used "Tanganika" in one of his screenshots above. "Tanganika" is in the Places Database as an English Variant Name for Tanzania. I can find no justification for that spelling in connection with Tanganyika / Tanzania. It does appear to be the former name of a District in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also referenced as an 1876 name for Lake Tanganyika.
No matter - there are, I understand, two purposes to Variant names - the first is genuine variants in one language or another. The other is to trap frequent mis-spellings. I've no idea which purpose "Tanganika" serves, so pedants like myself will just have to remain unsatisfied... (It doesn't matter - I think).
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@Gordon Collett - thanks for your work on Akwungwasi. It illustrates the scale of the problem.
I had hoped that the size of the job could be reduced if the system propagated names and dates down to subsidiary places. However, it looks like that isn't what the FS standard placenames database does. Thanks to another chap elsewhere, we've been looking at Saint Petersburg / Petrograd / Leningrad / Saint Petersburg.
The 1st St. Petersburg is named in the Standards Database as "Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire" and dated 1703-1914.
Petrograd is named as "Petrograd, Russian Empire" and dated 1914-1924.
Then "Leningrad, Russia, Soviet Union" which is dated 1924-1991.
So far as I can see, those dates are correct for the names of the cities but are not correct for the hierarchy of place(s) above.
For instance, "Russian Empire" is dated (in the database) "Unknown-1922". Personally, I'm not sure why it's 1922 but if if if the dates were compatible (e.g. by automatic propagation downwards) then Petrograd's assignation to the Russian Empire would have been end-dated 1922 and it would then be attributed to the next name ("Russia, Soviet Union") from 1922 onwards. So, proper propagation would see
"Petrograd, Russian Empire" dated 1914-1924 replaced by these 2 elements
"Petrograd, Russian Empire" dated 1914-1922 and
"Petrograd, Russia, Soviet Union" dated 1922-1924
To be followed by the existing "Leningrad, Russia, Soviet Union" dated 1924-1991
Yes, I know this is a breach of the "no small periods" rule but I've always presumed that was adopted to reduce work but automatic propagation would avoid that work.
Still, the fact that St Petersburg, etc, has those dates does suggest that each line is done manually. Ouch!
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I think the initial build of the database harvested a lot of names from previous systems and old user submissions of research. Some alternate place names do seem to be some random junk that could stand to be deleted. I think "Tanganika" falls in that category and was probably a mis-spelling in someone's contribution to the Ancestral File or something because of the way it looks:
It shouldn't be in all caps.
I took a look at that information about the database that @Adrian Bruce1 tried to access and it gives the following:
So apparently the intent is to one day have three historical time periods for all places currently in Tanzania. But that could be in the far future.
However, it does not state what country name they intend to use. Sometimes to keep things reasonable, they simplify things a bit. For example, Norway is Norway from 872 onward and the fact that at times it was part of Denmark and other times was part of Sweden is being ignored. I've never heard a Norwegian have any problem with the database saying it was always Norway.
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"I think the initial build of the database harvested a lot of names from previous systems and old user submissions of research ..."
Interesting @Gordon Collett - I'd never considered how place-name data might have been derived at the very start.
Personally, I don't have a particular problem with common "spelling errors" appearing in Alternative Names - though it would be nice to know why any single name was there. (I cling to my belief that there is a difference between a spelling error and a spelling variation - though I suspect it's probably just a matter of numbers and opinions).
Thanks for that paste of the current intentions for Tanzania - I suspect that hierarchy is the same as the one I found in Wikipedia but it's nice to know I'm on the same page. Can't see why non-Church members can't see that - though I suspect it may be an accidental bundling of everything.
Norway / Denmark-Norway / Sweden-Norway. 😲 I'd forgotten that - though I'm sure you hadn't! Actually, if I look at Wikipedia's take on Sweden-Norway in particular, there's wiggle-room in there that can justify keeping them separate. And Norway always seems to have existed - just not necessarily as a "top-level" jurisdiction.
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I don't know and haven't seen anything official about alternate names, but my view would be that if an alternate name is listed as a Variant, I would expect to find that spelling in documents somewhere such as older census records or a couple of decades of parish registers.
Example: 1801 Census - Møchelthun, Today's maps - Mykletun
Why Needed: If someone is adding information from the 1801 census, it's really helpful if when they type in the name as found in the census the proper place comes up rather than make them repeat the work of pouring over modern maps to try to figure out where the place is and what it is called now. This is also what allows the easiest linking of a correct historical name to the standardized version.
In contrast, if a name is listed as a misspelling, I would expect that that spelling will not be found anywhere but is rather a mistake people frequently make or that is a family tradition.
Example: Grandpa insists the family came from Mikletun, but all records at any time have a y, never an i.
Why Needed: If all of grandpa's descendants keep typing in Mikletun then complain to FamilySearch over and over again that it is missing from the database, it is useful to put that spelling in so that when they type it in FamilyTree, the proper spelling comes up.
The database only looks for exact matches again the entire list of names for a place. There is no predictive function such as Google's "did you mean ...?"
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" ... Why Needed: If all of grandpa's descendants keep typing in Mikletun then complain to FamilySearch over and over again that it is missing from the database, it is useful to put that spelling in so that when they type it in FamilyTree, the proper spelling comes up. ... "
Agreed @Gordon Collett - that's pretty much how it was explained to me.
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