Women's married names and consistency with sources
Hi,
I'm noticing an issue with the "consistent with sources" feature. I have a cousin, K26G-NFZ, whose birth name was Estelle Viola Jackson. She married a man named June, so she is mentioned in several sources as "Mrs. Estelle Jackson June". This difference is causing small consistency punishments because "Estelle Jackson" is a different first name from "Estelle Viola".
Would it be possible to special-case a check of some sort to eliminate this? I realize this may be a complicated request since it's not always the middle name that gets dropped.
A somewhat related issue is when women are referred to as "Mrs. Husband's First and Last" (issues #2 and 3 in the screenshot). That might be easier to check for.
Obviously this isn't a huge deal, since it does not prevent a "high quality" score, but it might be nice to not alert for an extremely typical circumstance.
Answers
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Just curious since I have not played around with this all that much. What happens if you put in alternate names of "Estelle Jackson" as first name with "June" last name, labeled as a married name and "Mrs. Newman W. June" divided appropriately in title, first name, and last name fields, also marked as a married name. Do the data conflict flags disappear? Do more research hints pop up using those names?
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@Gordon Collett - I've certainly had hints for Possible Duplicates appear very quickly after I've added an Alternate Name equal to the married name. That might not have appeared before if the logic is written to put such checks low down the priority list on the basis that the possible duplicate shouldn't be entered with a married name in the first place.
@JD Cowell - you're right that "it might be nice to not alert for an extremely typical circumstance". However, I'm unconvinced that it's possible to compile useful rules because I suspect that the resulting married names often vary in unexpected ways - especially with second marriages. It would seem easier to me to simply check the names and dismiss as appropriately.
I might add that there are cultures where any variation is worth calling out simply because women did not change their names on marriage - e.g. Scotland in the 1800s and earlier.
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Yes Hungarian women did not change their last names, this practice was adopted on immigration to countries where women did take their husband's names. They also did not have middle names unless they are nobility and adopted/assumed a middle initial when registering for social security.
Thus in order to accurately score consideration of the country of the record is needed.
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