Feature request: View alternate names for a location
Thank you for this opportunity. I would like to suggest an App. or feature in Family Search in which helps us to locate the name of a location (especially in Europe) where the name of a location has changed for whatever reason. Ever changing borders is a big struggle for researchers. My problem is - I found information on an ancestor who was born in 1893 and the person, who entered this ancestor's birth location, recorded it as Pancevo, Yugoslavia. Fortunately, I have done enough research in Hungary to know this was incorrect. It took me some time to research the correct name of the location. Yugoslavia was only in existence from 1918 - 2003. Therefore this is not the correct name of the location where they were born. At the time of her birth, this location was Pancsova, Hungary. Today this city is Pancevo, Serbia. I was then able to hire a genealogist in Serbia to locate some records for me. I would like to be able to type in the name of a location, and be able to find a list of alternate names of that location, along with their corresponding years. This would greatly improve accuracy in our Family Search trees. It would also help immensely in further research for for ancestors. Europe can be a nightmare! Thanks again for even considering a feature like this. Bev
Comments
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Such a feature already exists, although the underlying database is ever-evolving and never-complete: FamilySearch's Places tool (https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/).
(The arguments about "name now" versus "name at time of event" will never cease, but your example illustrates one reason that I lean very heavily toward the latter: "Pancsova, Torontál, Hungary" as the location of an 1893 event is a historical fact that will never change.)
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