Create a better way to recognize the paternal surname in the case of users (members) who use two
My experience when I use the Familysearch platform options that refer to the user's last name (that is, mine) was always very sad because it ignores my own personal identity by identifying me with my maternal surname. I have already written several times to the administrators of this platform to try to make them see that all of you make an unforgivable mistake when trying to identify with the maternal surname a Latin American or a citizen of a European country where said two surnames are used. In my 58 years of age I have not met the first person in these parts of the world who feels well treated when his or her paternal surname is ignored when identifying him or her (referring to him or her or when naming or identifying him or her). It is very disrespectful to address a person from Latin America or Europe where the paternal and maternal surnames are used in the name, but using the maternal surname, ignoring the paternal one, which is what constitutes their only and true identity. And I give you more clues, it is quite absurd to ask for help to know if this is true from someone originally from any of those regions but who lives in the United States because many of these people are already accustomed to American culture where what I am criticizing, YES it is normal. And acceptable.
This is not a scolding, it is an invitation to adapt the platform so that it is respectful of Latin America. I invite you to come to all of Latin America and do real exercises in the streets, calling (intentionally) people by their maternal family name, having a paternal one, and you will see that in almost all cases (not to mention that in the 100%) people will correct you and in many cases they will get upset.
Alfredo Ferreira
(I do not use my full name including my maternal surname because I know you would call me by my maternal surname and not by my paternal's)
Comments
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Alfredo, consider it from the other direction: in some of the languages/cultures that use both parents' names, the maternal surname comes first, while in others, the paternal surname comes first. In some countries, name usage is legislationally flexible: people can pick one spouse's surname to give to their children, or combine two surnames with a space or hyphen (in either order), or create a whole new marital surname and give that to their children, and so forth and so on.
In the U.S., the general expectation is "First Middle Last", of which "Middle" is optional (and not technically part of a person's legal name, per the Social Security Administration). Thus, if an average American sees a name with three elements, he will use the last one as the surname, and the first one as the given name. We can't exactly blame him for making those guesses: names don't usually come with country/language labels, after all.
Trust me, I understand full well how infuriating it is when people mangle your name. There is a certain genealogical site based in the UK that I cannot (and thus will not) do business with, because they claim that my name is invalid. That Dratted Hyphen is regularly taken as an excuse to skip half the name, or to re-arrange its parts in new and creative ways. There's one mailing list company (which sells primarily to real estate agents) that preemptively assigned one half to me, and the other half to my spouse. (It's actually all one name. It just happens to be spelled with a hyphen.)
That said, I'm not sure what part of FamilySearch you're complaining about. Name entries on the Family Tree each have a grand total of two name fields, one for the given name(s), the other for the surname(s). (There are also fields for things like titles or suffixes, but those aren't names.) I think that's about as ideal a compromise between flexibility and predictability as it is possible to achieve, and it certainly shouldn't ever offend anyone by skipping half a name.
The other place on FS with a lot of people's names is the indexed records, but (a) most of those are for deceased people, and (b) indexing is normally done in country- or collection-specific chunks that take a place's naming conventions into full consideration. Where exactly are you seeing your name truncated, and are you certain it's FS's fault?
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Based on the OP's title
CREATE A BETTER WAY TO RECOGNIZE THE PATERNAL SURNAME IN THE CASE OF USERS (MEMBERS) WHO USE TWO
my read is that the OP wants a way to know more about us, the other contributors, rather than about those people we enter/edit/connect in the FSFT.
Some of my professional genealogy friends/acquaintances (who should know better) make my given name "Áine Ní."
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Whether we are talking about names in Family Tree or user names, you are always welcome to include multiple names in the last names field. A Dutch name might be Johannes Diderik / van der Waals. A Mexican name might be José Manuel / López Castro. The full last names value (van der Waals or López Castro in my examples) should be used when addressing someone by their last name.
It's not clear what context @Ferreira3000 is complaining about. Is it in the Contact ID or Profile Name? Both of those can be set by the user. Is it in emails sent by FamilySearch? I would hope that those would be addressed to someone using the Contact ID or Profile Name, but if not, and only a partial surname is used, that would be an error that could be corrected. Or is it how some other users address you on forums such as this or using FamilySearch Messaging? Please provide the context so that we can help determine if this is something in the user's control, something FamilySearch needs to correct, or guidelines that should be encouraged for user-to-user interaction.
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