Can you please undo this bad "best practice"?
I recently came across a person where someone had removed the farm part of their name, with reference to this:
https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-to-enter-scandinavian-names-into-family-tree
This is a really bad idea. There's a reason why every bygdebok in Norway uses farm names as de-facto last names. It's needed to tell people apart, when you don't have heritable last names! A name that sometimes changes is much better than no family name at all. And in many cases they were used as last names, even from early on, and people who had a reason to, could and did hold on to them. (An example of this is Sivert Knutsson Aarflot (1759-1817). He kept the name Aarflot after moving because he had published books under that name.)Leaving out farm names will lead to a ton of confusion and mix-ups which will be a huge job to disentangle. A better "best practice" is to follow the practice of most bygdebok authors, and use the birth name, including the farm, as the default name.
Answers
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I completely agree. I find that if I repeatedly put back the farm name and add a reason statement much like your post here, usually after the third or fourth time the other user gives in or gives up and leaves the farm name alone.
I've submitted corrections to the help center article several times but whoever writes the articles has not made any changes yet or engaged in any conversation about it.
To quote the Norwegian archives introductory article on Norwegian genealogy:
Norwegian names today are composed of a first and last name, as in other western countries, but in the 19th century, a name acted as an important clue to someone’s place on the family tree. The typical 19th century Norwegian name would be composed of three parts: The given name, the patronymic and the farm name. Let’s take an example and break it down: Peder Johnsen Berg, a typical Norwegian farmer of the 1800s.
See: https://www.arkivverket.no/en/find-your-ancestors/tracing-your-ancestry
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