Place names - inconsistencies
I do not know if this has been mentioned before but I am finding it frustrating:-
Using MacFamilyTree on my Apple systems (Mac, iPad, iPhone), when I try to Sync with FamilySearch I get pre-selected place names, some do not cater for subtle differences and others are completely different:-
I use the City/Place/Town, County, Country for all my records but the list goes one step further e.g. Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales →Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales, United Kingdom.
Llandewi Rhydderch does not compute in the view - Llanddewi Rhydderch seems to be the only consistent name for the place. Yet Llandewi, Llanddewi and Llanthewy are similar spellings for the same name - same with Llangibi, Llangibbi, Llangibby.
Then within FamilySearch in Safari the place name selections are variously City, Town, Hundred, Civil Registration District and Poor Law Union - e.g. Abergavenny with and without "United Kingdom" in the name. Finally, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England now seems to only be able to be selected as New Sarum, Wiltshire, England.
Wouldn't it be nice to not suddenly be confronted with so many inconsistent options for a place and no way to see documented evidence of what the plan is for place names.
Answers
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Well, you can see the documented evidence - or rather, there is a facility to do that.
If you go to the URL https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/?focusedId=10581568&text=Llanddewi%20Rhydderch
you should see the entry for Llanddewi Rhydderch in the FamilySearch Standard Placename database. Each place has the ability to store a list of dated placenames plus the coordinates etc.
Problem number 1 is the sheer volume of places and the required workload to enter that data. For all places that might be relevant.
Problem 2 is getting agreement about what the standard names should be - very few UK genealogists use "United Kingdom" as part of their placenames post 1801, but for whatever reasons FamilySearch do. Strictly speaking of course, they are correct and I am possibly lazy.
Problem 3 is that FS started with one set of principles and experience taught them that wasn't a good idea. That's reality. But replacing the odd entries also takes time. That's why we still have Nantwich (say) as both a parish and a town.
Going forward, it's generally down to us to submit changes rather than rely on someone coming along in the future. That Placename facility has a facility to suggest changes (the pencil icon) and I have made a number of suggestions, which have been (eventually) actioned. I would suggest that you use the facility to request that the other spellings be entered as Alternate Names for the town of Llanddewi Rhydderch. I presume that the Alternate Names can be applied to all the dated variants, rather than requesting each in turn.
I don't understand why Llanddewi Rhydderch has a Gwent entry at the same time as a Monmouthshire entry - research may be needed there.
As for Salisbury, that name is an Alternate Name for New Sarum, which seems odd to me, but it should therefore be feasible to enter Salisbury and have it display as Salisbury and be standardized as New Sarum - the FS system explicitly allows for that but I don't know how synchronisation with other systems works.
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Answering my own comment... New Sarum was apparently the official name for the city of Salisbury until 2009.
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Salisbury as an alternate name for New Sarum makes me bang my head against the wall - how could anyone have ever thought that way round was a good idea, given that indexing of any sort is fundamentally aimed at aiding searching and retrieval? I have lived within 40 miles of Salisbury almost all my life and am well aware of the relevant local history, but I can't imagine myself putting Sarum in a search query.
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@MandyShaw1 - precisely. Official names are not always followed. IIRC, King's County, Ireland, became County Offaly in 1922, in common usage and in the standard names - yet officially, according to Wikipedia, it's actually still King's County - because governmental changes take time and cash which might be better spent elsewhere
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@MandyShaw1, Re: "I can't imagine myself putting Sarum in a search query." The goal with the places database is for users to be able to put in any name that one spot on the globe has had through history (within reason) and have that place come up in any of the various drop down menus. If you put in Salisbury and someone else puts in New Sarum, you should both end up with the same results.
@NestaFrancis, Re: "Wouldn't it be nice to not suddenly be confronted with so many inconsistent options for a place and no way to see documented evidence of what the plan is for place names." We can see the plan for place names here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/standards/admin/place-reports/ Although this is a replacement for an older version of the same information and I don't know if they have finished constructing it this yet. For most countries there is a lot more information about the intended structure for place names than England currently has. This document has more information about what they are trying to have the Places database be: https://www.familysearch.org/en/standards/admin/place-reports/
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@Gordon Collett - re New Sarum / Salisbury. Yes and no. Theoretically you should be able to make a query using the primary or Alternate names and end up with the same answer. Theoretically… However, every instinct from professional experience says that each extra step is something that can go wrong, so each extra step constitutes a risk that something might go wrong.
I've just been trying to use Ancestry and FindMyPast to look at the birthplaces entered by people in the 1881 or 1901 censuses and I can see no evidence anyone ever said that they were born in New Sarum. On the other hand, current residences tend to be taken from one or more items in the official description, giving a name which is not necessarily the term used by the average Jo(e) in the street. There seem to be 691 records of people living in New Sarum in FMP's 1901 census and 1049 in Salisbury in the same census. So the equivalence of the two is definitely needed, it's just the choice of which is the primary that represents a risk to me.
After all (tongue in cheek warning) - if FamilySearch can create "British Colonial America" as an utterly unofficial placename, it seems a little odd to insist on "New Sarum" instead of "Salisbury" because it's the official name!
But in all seriousness, this does illustrate the size and complexity of the task to populate the Standard Placenames Database with agreed names…
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So here is the list of names for New Sarum ( https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/?pagesize=100&text=New%20Sarum,%20wiltshire&focusedId=3056853 ) :
I would assume that if someone used the "improve this place" link and fully explained why one of the many varieties of Salisbury should be the Display Name in a convincing manner including why anyone researching this area would use it, that someone editing rights in charge of England could take 5 seconds and switch this.
@NestaFrancis , Re: "Finally, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England now seems to only be able to be selected as New Sarum, Wiltshire, England," you can almost always enter place names in the best way you know. You are rarely required to select one specific form. To take this New Sarum example, if you feel that for profiles you are working on in Family Tree this really should be Salisbury then just enter them this way. Type out the full place name then click on the top line of the drop down menu:
This enters the name in the manner you wish to see it. Then click on the Standard to link the current standard for the time period:
This is the entire purpose for the dual place name entry system in Family Tree. It allows one reference name for each time period for the program to use (view this as just a textual stand in for the latitude and longitude of a spot on the globe) while allowing users to enter then best name to show on the profile page.
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So, it is a lot of work and effort to go to the Places links and trawl through so many places when it does not find the place you have recorded from Census, BMD, etc. It was identified as such by Adrian Bruce in the first comment.
Regarding any place identified as Monmouthshire which changed to Gwent in 1973 and subsequently Newport, Monmouthshire, Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent in the 2000's. There are some anomalies for border areas like Blaenavon and Brynmawr - Monmouthshire or Breconshire/Powys.
New Sarum seems to be a district/area of Salisbury as well.
Also, the sub text "city", "civil registration district", etc does not appear in the options to merge from MacFamilyTree.
The pedantic in me does not want to see the "Non Standardised Place" when I have merged it from my Ancestry/MacFamilyTree records.
Yet anyone who understands history will identify England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island as parts of United Kingdom/Great Britain. Does the same happen for Argentina, South America or Egypt, North Africa?
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Additionally, if people using the various Ancestry tools across the web then they should remain consistent to avoid confusion. That I the whole reason for posting the question here. If the Census states Birth/Residence as Salisbury then is should not have defaulted to New Sarum.
Alright, some transcription/written variations creep in as I see for Rowlestone/Rowlstone, Herefordshire which can also pose a problem for Gloucestershire research due to the different villages of Wollaston and Woolastone.
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anyone who understands history will identify England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island as parts of United Kingdom/Great Britain. Does the same happen for Argentina, South America or Egypt, North Africa?
No because those are countries (nation states?) in their own right. "United Kingdom" is totally different from "South America" - the UK is a state while "South America" is just a geographical expression.
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