Opinion question - which name to use in the Vital section?

Larry Olson_1

I have a distant relative from Norway, Ludvig Emil Carlsen (his patronym from birth). His father had the surname Carl Eriksen Thronsen, so the indexed version of his immigration document reads Ludvig Emil Thronsen. In the US, he went by Louis Thronsen.

I could:

1) Put his patronym in the Vital Section and other names as alternates, or

2) Put the name he chose to go by as an adult in the Vital section, and the patronym as the Birth Name in the Other Info section.

What are your opinions?

The important thing, I think, is to list all names, so the person can be found easier during a search.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Toss a coin, and see how that makes you feel?

That's actually a serious answer: the hinting system and Find both treat all of a profile's names equivalently. If you search for "Harry Houdini", he'll show up on the results list as "Harry Houdini". If you search for "Erik Weisz", he'll show up on the results list as "Erik Weisz". In other words, the choice of which name goes in Vitals and which names go in Other only makes any difference to the people looking at the profile -- which, for non-famous people, is mostly going to be the profile's creator, i.e., you.

Gordon Collett

I agree it is group choice as decided on by the majority of the person's descendants who are users of Family Tree with the goal of best identifying the person.

My personal choice is to try to always use a person's birth name under vitals and put all other names in the Other Information section.

For my wife's Norwegian relatives that is either:

• First name: all first names
• Last name: patronymic

if all they had was a patronymic surname. Or if, as most of her relatives did, they had more to their name:

• First name: all first names and patronymic
• Last name: farm name or family name or fixed patronymic name

This is what Geni recommends and what I have found to be the most useful.

Then under Alternate names I put each version of their name using a different farm name if they moved and any names they uses after emigrating.

In your example, I would put under birth:

First name: Ludvig Emil Carlsson

Last name: the surname the family used at the time of his birth

and under Alternate names put:

• First name: Ludvig Emil
• Last name: Carlsson

and

• First name: Ludvig Emil
• Last name: Thronsen

with an explanation of what each name is.

(I like to use the Norwegian form of the patronymic which is -son to show it is a true patronymic and use -sen for a fixed patronymic which does not change from generation to generation. -sen is Danish but did become the most common way to write patronymics in the days of Danish rule and is still what you see used in fixed patronymics today except in Iceland where they still use the old Norwegian -son.)

Larry Olson_1

Thank you, Gordon, for the well-thought out and logical answer!