City Directories, part G, Hawaiian names
There are some Hawaiian city directory pages in this project. Quite often there is only one name given, such as the one I'm looking at now: Hailama.
Should I index this as a Surname or a Given Name I read in a Wikipedia article that Hawaiians did not traditionally have surnames, so I'm guessing these are given names. But then, they are listed alphabetically in the directory among the surnames. I have been indexing them as surnames with blank given names.
Is there a rule about this?
Answers
-
From the Given Name Field Help (purple question mark above the field):
The given names may be written either before or after the surname. Be sure to type the names in the correct fields in the data entry area. If you cannot determine if a name is a given name or a surname, type it in this field.0 -
That direction sounds like it is talking about a situation where there are two names and you can't determine which is the surname and which is the given name and says you should put them both in the given names field. I suppose similar reasoning would lead us to put these Hawaiian names in the given names field. But this isn't a case where there is ambiguity about two names and which is which. There must be a convention about how to treat Hawaiian names.
0 -
I just had a look at the US 1900 census for Hawaii. For a family whose head was named Koomoa and wife Keata and daughter Leelee, they indexed them as Koomoa Koomao, Keata Koomoa and Leelee Koomoa. Not really helpful for my question.
0 -
If you are unsure of a name, even if it's one name, index it in the Given Name field.
We do not use other sources to help index.1 -
OK, that's helpful.
Thanks.
0
