Eleanor = Ellen! .

LegacyUser

dbhoskisson said: Please make it so when you search Eleanor, it also finds Ellen. And vice versa. Thank you.

Brent

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Paul said: Good point. I was very surprised - quite some time ago - to discover I have to make two separate searches for two names that are often found as variants for the same individual.

Searching with a El*n* first name input brings up not only Ellen and Eleanor but other variants such as Ellin, Elliner and Eleanora. Unfortunately, it will also produce results for names such as Elizabeth Hannah and Elizabeth Ann, as use of the wildcard will mean the whole of the first name(s) on the system will be examined - hence ELizabeth ANN and ELizabeth HaNNah in the results!

Far easier if FamilySearch were to start recognising Eleanor, Ellen, etc. as variant names.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Incidentally, I've just found a similar problem with Anna and Hannah, which I often find are shown in different records for the same individual. A search on "Anna" produces Ann, Anne and Annie, but no Hannah results. One on "Hannah" just gives Hannah and Hanna.

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Brian Jensen said: Thanks you for the suggestions. We will look into these.

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dbhoskisson said: Interestingly there is also the opposite. In England, John and Jonathan are two distinctly different names. You will often find both names in the same family. But FamilySearch is always claiming they are possible matches.

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Tom Huber said: That's the problem with languages. What is common in one interpretation of a language is not in another and vice versa.

Geographic elements (where a person lived) only add to the problem.

And also add in the problem of name abbreviations. Jno is a common abbreviation I've seen in documents from various parts of the United States. But what is it an abbreviation for? John or Jonathan?

Spelling is another issue. It is largely in the mind of the beholder. Until Webster published his dictionary -- and it was widely accepted as the standard for American spelling -- spelling was all over the place. For instance, some people spelled the common word water as watter.

Computer Artificial Intelligence isn't, despite claims to the contrary; it is still the realm of science fiction. That's especially true of the written languages.

Until governments started mandating the spelling (such as American Social Security), names were often spelled as they were heard and because many people were illiterate, they didn't know if a recorder properly spelled their name, or even what the proper spelling was.

What I'm saying is that what we expect a program to do and what it does are often two different things. Is that a problem with those who devised the code a program uses or simply a shortcoming of something else, like the language?

Sites like FamilySearch have to accommodate some very weird rules in the code that is used behind computer search algorithms. It is not unusual to see what was largely a good system scrapped in favor of what promises to be better. But even with the better system, there is a certain amount of "training" the program that has to take place and that's where the "artificial intelligence" enters the picture.

Situations like this one falls into that category. The best we, as users, can do is to bring up the situation and let the folks that run the site deal with it as best they can. Name equivalencies are one of those areas, so the situation raised is entirely appropriate. Thankfully, we have been repeatedly told that every discussion thread is read by FamilySearch personnel.

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gasmodels said: Part of the issue with John and Jonathan is that many of the christening records I have looked at have almost shorthand notes associated with the name and it appears to depend on the person who wrote the original record so you might see Jon or Jn or John all for John but you might also see Jon for Jonathan. It can be very confusing and therefore we do have some unusual name combinations that have been generated over the years.

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Paul said: Just a quick one relating to John and Jonathan - in the older English parish registers "Jno" is always meant to be John. I can't remember if there is an explanation for this oddity, but inexperienced transcribers / indexers frequently make an error when encountering this.

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Paul said: Oh, here's an "explanation" I just found:
"Jno. is an abbreviation of the Latin Johannes. In medieval Latin this could be written as Jhohannes, abbreviated Jho. It has been suggested that the second letter (h) lost its ascender over the years, and came to be written as n. So the abbreviation became Jno."

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Juli said: No, Johannes never had an h after the J. The two possible spellings in Latin are Johannes and Joannes. The 'o' at the end of the abbreviation most likely started as one of those squiggly flourish thingies commonly used to mark an abbreviation, that is, it used to be something like "Jn~", and it became common to interpret -- and therefore write -- the ~ as an o instead.

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W David Samuelsen said: Add Ella to that.

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Kevin Dodge said: Searching has been updated. Searches for Ellen and Ella should now return Eleanor. Additionally searches for Eleanor should return Ellen.

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Paul said: Much appreciated.

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dbhoskisson said: Thumbs up.

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W David Samuelsen said: Elinor.