What do we do with "Official" names that were not recognized locally?
The name of the post office at Rexburg, Bingham County (now in Madison County) Idaho Territory / State was officially renamed "Kaintuck" on 8 August 1889 and stayed that way until it was officially changed back 27 February 1893.
I initially discovered this name on the 1890 Assessment roles for Bingham County while looking for information on my Roylance line:
On image 55 you see:
I'm pretty sure that there were very few people who lived there at the time who agreed with the name, given the political nature of the change. So where does this fit into our efforts to standardize? Do we include this information on the existing standardized places (10703350 & 10703351 and maybe others) under "Alternate Names" or should a separate place name be requested?
Best Answers
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Each place can only have one display name per historical time period. The "Alternate Names" is the full list of names for the place and one of them in this list will be designated the "Display Name." When searching in the Place name database, all alternate names are searchable. When working in Family Tree, if a non-display alternate name is entered, only the display name appears in the drop menu but one can still just type out the full place name so the alternate name shows on the person's Family Tree and the display name shows as the standardized version.
So assuming few people would want to use "Kaintuck" you would ask that it be added as an alternate name. Since it only existed for 3 1/2 years, I doubt it would be worthwhile to ask to have a new historical time period added for it.
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All variant names are searchable. I will add Kaintuck, as you requested. Thanks for your patience.
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I find it best to use the most commonly-known name as a "short" Display Name This will be the standardized name. Its full official name, of course, would be classified as Full Name. The previously known names (official or unofficial) can be classified as Variant Names.
This way, the more commonly-known name is more visible and variant names can still be seen and selected, if the user prefers to do so.
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When you say "'Variant Names" - would I ask that it be added to "Alternate Names" or "Display Names"? Which one is searchable?
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