Zimbabwe, Bulawayo—Church Records, 1894–2022
Good afternoon all! If you look at the sample provided for this document (snapshot below) it designates the "Nomen Xtianum" is the surname and "Nomen Paganum" is the given name. And in that sample it appears to be correct. However in my batch (attached) if you look at the names, that is clearly reversed. Since I don't speak a language of Zimbabwe I don't know the meaning of those headers to determine if the names were reversed by accident. Help please!
https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/6a361f5f-e117-41f2-9433-924490d45c49
Answers
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I guess my question is should I index them incorrectly?
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Unfortunately, even if the person who originally filled out the form (or wrote the record) did it incorrectly (i.e., entered male instead of female), as indexers we are instructed to enter what we see on the form unless specifically instructed to do otherwise in the Project Instructions*.
Now that FamilySearch is starting to make more of the indexed records editable, researchers will be able to edit that data themselves, and if not, they can enter the correct information in their files and make notations about the records they attach..
Name Field Help:
Type the given names as they were written. Do not correct misspellings or expand abbreviations.
The given names may be written either before or after the surname. Be sure to type the names in the correct fields in the data entry area. If you cannot determine if a name is a given name or a surname, type it in this field.
Include all aliases, nicknames, or variant names that were given for a person, separating them with the word Or.
Do not include titles, terms, prefixes, or suffixes with the name.
If the given names were not recorded or were written as a variation of the word "unknown," press Ctrl+B to mark this field blank.
*An example of an exception is with geographic place locations that are spelled incorrectly.
Locality Field Help: You should expand abbreviations or correct misspellings when you can tell what the abbreviation stands for or what the correction should be to the spelling.
P.S., These are Catholic church records, and the column headers are in Latin. 😊
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Thanks so much for responding! Yes, I know the instructions I've been doing this a long time - it just always seems so ridiculous to enter incorrect data but I do it anyway, but begrudgingly (lol). And Latin!! I should have known that!
Again, thank you so much!
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I agree, especially when you can see that the person who filled out the form was at fault!
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The column headers are in Latin, not a language of Zimbabwe. Nomen Xtianum is short for Nomen Christianum: "Christian name", and Nomen Paganum is "pagan name". Looking at the shared batch, that's exactly how it's filled out: the things in the Christian name column are mostly in English, or recognizable as names in English, while the things in the pagan name column are mostly not.
The example image in the instructions, on the other hand, was filled out with no regard for the meaning of those column headers: the Christian name column has everything from Forbes to Chikerema, while the pagan name column has things like Michael James. I do not know why they picked an example that misuses the form like this; perhaps it represents the majority of the records, that is, the clerks regularly filled out the form according to their own rules?
If I were indexing this, I'd be sorely tempted to follow the "if you can't tell" rule: put everything in the given name field.
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And we've answered this particular question, about Nomen Christianum and Nomen Paganum, at least half a dozen times over the last several months.
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Wow. Thanks. I asked my question nicely, and I did go through several pages of postings to see if there was an answer to my question before I posted - didn't see one. Forgive me if I didn't go through every single page. Not sure why you felt the need to make a rude comment like this, but whatever. After indexing 189,295 records this is a first for me. Have a nice day.
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@Denise Nelson_8 I'm sorry if you found my matter-of-fact comment to be rude. That was not the vein in which I offered it.
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