Place Standardization
When entering or updating a place name, should I use the name of the place when the event happened, or the current name?
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This is an argument that's as old as the concept of history and the recognition that placenames change.
I am firmly on the "name at the time of the event" side: that's an unchanging historical fact. (If the place had multiple names at the time, pick one; it's still an unchanging historical fact.)
The arguments for using the modern name and jurisdiction tend to center on finding: finding the place on maps, and finding the relevant records in archives. However, I find these arguments unconvincing: most of the time, I need to know what it was then in order to identify the right records, or to even know where to look and what to look for -- and if I pick the right place, FamilySearch will stick the pin in the right spot on the map regardless of which name I use.
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The subject I always find difficult here is the one of burials: should I enter the place name where my ancestor was buried or where they are buried?
On balance, I have to agree with Julia: using the name as it would have been known say a hundred of years or so ago would probably be better in relation to searches for records of the event. Using the name as it is known today might be more helpful in attempts to find the cemetery - say if planning to make a visit.
However, the Find A Grave records I come across always have the name recorded in the form it would be recognised today.
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@Paul W That's Findagrave.com's standardization. It's not possible to enter anything that is not in their database of places. And I don't agree with their standardization either. What they have done with the names of the boroughs in New York City is a mess.
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I believe that in European conditions, especially in Central Europe, the situation with standardized places is somewhat different. In the course of the past centuries, there have been many changes of states and their regions, there were also stages when large parts of today's states were incorporated into other states with a completely different language. A typical example is the era of Austria-Hungary, when it also included many parts of today's states such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Croatia, Romania, and Serbia. A large part of historical place names, especially in other ruling languages (German, Hungarian) has no connection to the current arrangement or current location of archival sources. These resources are largely located in the current states. The fact that some place in today's Czech Republic was once part of the Austrian monarchy is more of a historical interest than practically usable information. In addition, the exact designation of the correct historical designation of a place is often very laborious, the FS database is insufficient in this regard and very simplified. That's why I'm more inclined towards the variant of standardized places in the current form. If, for some reason, it is appropriate to include the historical form, the author can use another alternative field for such data.
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@Jaroslav said
" ... The fact that some place in today's Czech Republic was once part of the Austrian monarchy is more of a historical interest than practically usable information ... "
Curiously that was one example that was going through my head on reading this thread. Using the current name is one way of approaching things, but shouldn't the researcher stick to it and, when countries change names, shouldn't they go through changing the placenames in FS? For instance, did they go in and change all their Czechoslovakia placenames to Czech Republic or Slovakia as appropriate? Did they, later still, go in and change all their Czech Republic placenames to Czechia? (Although, if I understand Wikipedia correctly, English speakers appear to be ignoring the Czech government on that one).
And saying that someone was born in 1960 in Germany, when they were actually born in East Germany conveys a whole different impression... That use of current names loses information.
Having said that, I totally understand your comments about the FS Database being over-simplified and perhaps there comes a time when you have to cut your losses and stick to the least worst option.
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Many online genealogy sites try to simplify the mapping problem by insisting on modern jurisdictions (so that they can just use Google Maps). This means that I am forced to enter my grandfather's birth as occurring in a country that did not exist until thirty years after his death. I find this ...offensively ridiculous.
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I don't think information is lost by using the current standardized names. The user still has an overview of all historical names according to individual periods in the scroll list of the selection of standardized places. It is also possible to enter the entire database of standardized places and look for everything you need there. If the user ever needs some historical inclusion of a specific place, he can easily find it this way, there is no need to have such data for every person, often dozens or hundreds of people have the same historical inclusion of the event location in the part of the family tree that interests the user, typically siblings for example.
The problem of historical and current place names also has its political or national background. Members of different nations have different relationships and different perceptions of certain historical stages, the national and state identity of specific population groups was not always in harmony. These circumstances question the notion of a single, correct, immutable historical place name. This is quite complex in today's territory of the Czech Republic or Slovakia, and there is actually no solution that would satisfy everyone. Similar complications certainly exist in other regions of Europe and the world, although probably not always to such an extent.
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Using historical place names will confuse some people no matter how recent the place name changed. (I'm thinking of a recent discussion on Walter Reed Army Hospital, whose Washington DC location closed in 2011, and a new Navy building in Maryland opened and was named Walter Reed. A person thought FamilySearch was incorrectly identifying a 2003 birth location as Washington DC when it should be Maryland.)
Likewise, using modern place names will also sometimes cause confusion. This is exacerbated by the more and more common practice of lumping records from before a place name existed into record collections of current place names so that all records created *in that spot* are together regardless of the political entity which created them. Check out this fantastic example in a FamilySearch collection. The marriage record, link below, is for a 1792 marriage that FamilySearch says took place in Kentucky because the record is included in the Kentucky marriage collection. The collection name is very careful to only include years when Kentucky actually existed, but the records in the collection go back way further (false advertisement?). When you actually read the 3rd and 4th lines of the document, you see "Commonwealth of Virginia".
Aldert Plough, "Kentucky, County Marriages, 1797-1954" • FamilySearch
My 2 cents is to go back and think about why you are doing this work. My personal answer to that is I'm helping future people learn about my/their ancestors. If you look at Aldert's person page and the changes to the marriage info section, you will see that in 2021 I doggedly changed the marriage location to Virginia, but I'm not sure I would do that now.
Bottom line: I don't think there is a correct answer for every location.
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@Jaroslav stated, "the FS database is insufficient in this regard and very simplified."
Yes, this is true because of the incomplete status of the Places database for much of the world. However, the database is gradually, although slowly, growing and improving and its basic structure shows basically unlimited capacity to describe places correctly though out of all history. Probably all that stands in the way of it reaching its potential is limited resources and low staffing of the department in charge.
There are places, however, where right now you can drop a map pin and look at the surrounding places and see their entire history. For example I can drop a pin at 60.0628,10.0793 and see:
Picking any of these places, I can see the full jurisdictional history of it:
Now I will admit that Norway is a pretty easy place to deal with. It's been very stable as a country. And yes, there was, according to the Places documentation anyone can access on line, a decision to simplify things by calling Norway Norway throughout its history and not having a separate name for it when it was under the rule of Denmark or Sweden.
However, getting back to the original question of which name to use in Family Tree, there is a question under the Profile Quality Score group (see: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/159488/quality-score-issues-with-marriage-cities-and-death-counties-that-cant-be-fixed item two) which seems to indicate that the routine does compare the date of an event with the timespan of the standardized name for the event and flags as a data conflict when the date is outside of the timespan. I have not dug around enough to see if I can find examples of this to confirm that behavior. However, if that is the case, then this indicates that the quality routine will be encouraging people to use the place name at the time of the event.
It this is not behavior people want to see, then you probably should be looking for examples where the quality checker should not be flagging ""The date of ... is in conflict with the standardized place .... which existed from ....." and be posting your view of the matter in the quality checker feedback group: https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/323-profile-quality-score-feedback
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