Baptismal Name as Alternate Name in Other Information (below Vitals)
In “Other Information/Add Information/Alternte Names/Add Alternate Name”, add “Baptismal Name”.
Justification: German immigrants in the Itajaí Valley (Brazil) generally received a baptismal name quite different from the one they received in the Civil Registry.
At baptism, the first name usually consisted of the name chosen by the parents, usually, but not always, the one preceding the family name. This name in turn was preceded by other names, usually one to three, which honored the godparents. The names that honored the godparents, most of the time, do not appear in the civil registry. It is also frequent to use corresponding Portuguese names in the civil registry for the German baptismal names.
Including the “Baptismal Name” option would not only retain this information, but make it visible in the “Other Information” field (below Vitals).
The creation of the new option would certainly make it possible to avoid duplication of records and thus eliminate tens of thousands (probably much more) of conflicting data.
On the other hand, there is the alternative “Name at birth”, whose purpose/use I still don't understand. I suppose it is intended for cases of people who have had their name changed by court order.
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I use the "birth name" type of alternate name for people who changed their surnames. This way, the name they actively chose goes in Vitals, while the one they were merely born with goes in Other.
Is there some reason you don't want to enter baptismal names as an "also known as" type of alternate name? That's the catch-all category for names, and I don't see any reason not to use it here. You can explain that it's a baptismal name in the reason box.
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My American Lutheran ancestors have a Germanic name in the church records and a secular name elsewhere.
GedcomX provides the name type 'Religious Name', but not 'Baptismal Name'. FamilySearch does not support this tag. Those who use the API know that putting the data in the one of the other name fields causes the data to be mapped into the wrong field in the local database. Manual labor is required to undo what the FamilyTree API hath done.
The use of 'Also Known As', 'Custom Event', 'Custom Fact' and other catch-all fields as a substitute for correctly tagged data does a disservice to API users. Ulrich Lingner's idea has merit.
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The issue is with first names, not with last names. Below the field "Last Names" it reads "Enter birth or maiden names". So why Birth Name as alternate name? I constantly deal with two different first names: the one given in the civil registry and the one given at baptism. This is the rule, not the exception, for the period 1876 to 1945.
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