Original country
My idea is that all references to birth places and other events should be shown as the original historical instead of the current location. So many countries and places have changed names resulting from war, political and other reasons. But our records of ancestors are in the historical names of the original location, so I believe our family trees should show accordingly. Certainly somewhere in the family tree it will be noted that the original location is now know by another name.
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That's already possible, and many people try diligently to enter places as you described. Even in those cases where there is no entry in the database of standard places for the place in a particular time period, you can enter the original place and then select a standard place that most closely matches the place you entered.
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Unlike some other genealogy sites I've tried, which require modern jurisdictions if you want things to show up on maps and such, on FamilySearch, the use of historical placenames is fully supported. Users like us are free to enter locations as they were known at the time of the event, and even if that exact label is not (yet) in the database, we can associate it with a map location for the computer to use.
There has always been a debate between "name then" or "name now" for genealogical purposes, but I believe the general consensus is that historical ("name then") is preferable: it is an unchanging historical fact, and, as you say, it is often relevant for finding records about events. But it's not the sort of question that will ever be definitively settled, because the modern jurisdiction ("name now") is also often relevant for finding documents, and sometimes, the changes to a place's jurisdictions are exactly the point for a modern researcher.
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In selected cases, the Place Names people have been deleting some time periods, preferring instead the current name. For example, try to use Arkansas Territory. The user is referred to the current name. Arkansas became a state in 1836, but FamilyTree's date of creation of Arkansas is that of the territory, 1819. The same rule has been applied to Idaho Territory, Oklahoma Territory and probably all of the other territories. How extensively this rule has been applied, I do not know.
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As Bruce notes, someone at FamilySearch has decided the location to which this should no longer apply is with certain of the formerly named places in what is now the United States of America. A "simplification" explanation was provided at the time certain "territories" disappeared from the Standards database, but that does not make sense when the specialised team has been adding place names (to match the time periods) for locations in the rest of the world!
As mentioned, FamilySearch generally provides a far better choice of place names (suitable to time period, etc.) than most other websites. However, it is often users' choices that lead to standardized place names not being a suitable match (on their ancestors' profile pages).
I find the main problems (apart from those discussed here previously, relating to the auto-standardization exercise) appear to be when records are brought over from other providers - e.g., Find A Grave and Find My Past - who have indexed their records with place names as they are currently known, rather than at the time the event took place.
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Regarding the combining of US states and territories for standardized places, here is the relevant help article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/when-did-familysearch-combine-us-states-and-their-historic-territories-in-familysearch-places
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Not your fault @Alan E. Brown but I've never understood how "thousands of users, over time, will benefit from the improved accuracy in our data" when the revised values are now wrong but were right before. "Easier" I can agree with but...
However, IIRC, it is possible to insert the word "Territory" in the middle of the placename so that an (incorrectly by date) standardised "Utah, United States" can be altered to display as "Utah Territory, United States" while still linked to the standard of "Utah, United States". This is how the system is designed to work and is actually a good thing.
Again, IIRC, a previous thread somewhere revealed that there are still three Territories in the list of US State / Territory names - they still exist because they are nothing like their modern equivalent.
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