Should a John Doe on a Death Certificate be indexed?

JulieJohnson50

I'm reviewing a death certificate and the deceased is a John Doe. The indexer classified it as "no extractable data." Is this correct?

Melissa S Himes

Yes you index all the information including John Doe.

AndLinda

@JulieJohnson50 I am wondering if you were able to understand the reason why John Doe would be indexed as the person's name? This is a great question! Thank you. We do type what we see for the name and any name variants. Individuals who would be searching for the last name of Doe for their family would be able to find these records and draw their own conclusion. If you would like to go to FamilySearch and click on Family Tree and then Find and type in the name of John Doe, you would be able to see many individuals with that name of John as a first or middle name and many individuals with the last name of Doe. So we would not assume that in the indexed record it was of someone whose name was unknown and the enumerator put in that individual was "a" John Doe. Although there is not a particular article addressing this, maybe the following indexing article could be beneficial.

https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-index-alias-names-and-other-name-variations

Shannon Potter Wilcox

@JulieJohnson50 We have an Indexing Chat community that I would like to give you the link to. It may be a good place in the future to help you as well with any questions you may have.

https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/100-indexing-chat

Happy Indexing

Melissa S Himes

It should be indexed with all the pertinent information filled in, including the Given and Surname of John Doe.

JulieJohnson50

The given and surname is "John Doe." Do I still index the rest of the information?

JulieJohnson50

Thank you so much to those of you who responded! I now know more than I did before!