Records for Females who get married and take on the husbands Surname and how should it be done?
How should I handle females that get married please?
ID MFGD-ZLG (Marianne Underwood) is a good example and a relative of mine.
- Name at the top shows: Marianne Underwood;
- Alternate Name has three entries:-
- Birth Name - Marianne Underwood;
- Also Known as - Marianne Underwood;
- Also Known as - Marianne Underwood
3. Is it enough to record a Marriage?
4. I saw another query about searching for females and it was suggested to input the Married Name under Alternate. Is this necessary or a good idea for others that are searching for females?
Another example is my own mother.
Margaret Jane Ryan married Stewart Campbell Preston:
- should I record an Alternate Name, using 'Married Name'?
- If I was to do 1 I would then enter: Married Name, Margaret Jane Preston
Thanks for any assistance, pointers, ideas.
PS: I am not shy of data entry work and entering FULL names. I see it can assist finding out 'who is who'.
Best Answers
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This is a good question. The alternate names you provide can certainly can make a difference in record hinting and searching, so it's helpful to do it right.
For your example of Marianne Underwood, I believe you intended to write "Marianne Preston" for your entry 2b.
An entry that provides the married name of "Marianne Preston" is indeed helpful. But it would be more specific (and thus more helpful) if that alternate name were specified as "Married Name" instead of simply "Also Known As". The alternate name type won't make any difference in hinting or searching, but it will make it clearer to other researchers where it came from.
The entries you listed in 2a and 2c are exact matches of the primary name "Marianne Underwood" and so they are needless clutter and could be deleted with no loss of information or functionality.
Simply entering a spouse will not be nearly as helpful as entering a married name for finding additional records (through searching or hinting) that may contain only the married name and not the maiden name. Also note that in some cases you may have identified a Married Name for a woman before you have been able to locate the actual husband, and so you can supply the Married Name when there is no spousal relationship yet. That can aid you in finding records that will identify the husband.
One reason that a good set of alternate names is helpful in searching is that when you use the feature on the Person Page for Search Records (in FamilySearch), the search will be prepopulated with up to 3 alternate names attached to the person (as a side note, that "up to 3" restriction provides a motivation to clean up redundant alternate names so that truly useful names are populated).
What you proposed for your mother looks good. The important detail for the married name(s) you enter is that they should match what actually will appear in records.
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@ Alan E. Brown Thank you for the reply. You are right about Marianne Preston. However, as per the attached screen shot one can see that "FamilySearch' has created the Alternate Name:Birth Name and then (name removed) has created 2 x Alternate Name: Also Known As.
I will leave these for the time being and if you comment again then I might delete two records and change one to 'Married Name'.
Marrianne Underwood was my great Grandmother: married to my great Grandfather.
I've now got my mothers record showing how I want with a NickName and her Married Name with the records showing her Birth Name.
** I do have another question. I noticed that 'now' my Mothers record is updated with the source from Find a Grave for my mother. Do you know how long these things take to update? The Find a Grave was had wrong dates, missing information and I've now updated Find a Grave and those changes have not come through to Family Search, yet!!
Also, this reference is listed under Sources by Profile 'A TREE'!! Do you know if this a System Profile that does things or actually a human being sitting behind the profile?'
Thanks so much for all your assistance and have a great Sunday.
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Answers
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You can certainly delete those two redundant Alternate Names. The one created by FamilySearch in 2012 is an artifact of the Data imports that created the original Family Tree. And the other redundant one created by a user can be deleted; as long as you have good reasons for the edits you make on Family Tree, you don't have to worry that someone else created the original details. It's definitely better to set the alternate name type to "Married Name" if that's what it really is.
As for Find A Grave updates, I don't know precisely how long they take, but it is often a matter of months, not days. So don't hold your breath while you wait for the index to be updated!
That profile named "A TREE" is just some person's contact ID; it's certainly not a system ID. So don't worry about the odd name; you can feel free to interact with that user just as you would with any other user.
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Mod note: Your post was edited to maintain the privacy of a living person. Please see the Community Code of Conduct.
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@sc woz for clarity, I posted a screenshot of a deceased person but are you advising me because the screen shot showed the Profile Handle of the people making the changes and they are still alive !!!
Thanks..
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