Documenting the Finnish Surnames
Since Finnish surnames seemed to not only be based on patronymics but can also be taken from where they were living at the time, how do you record that on your family tree?
Example: Matti Jacobson lived on the Kettula farm, so he took Kettula as a surname. He later moved to the Luoma farm and took Luoma as a surname. Would this be recorded as:
Matti Jacobson Kettula Luoma (the last three being surnames)
or
Matti Jacobson of Kettula Luoma
What do you do if they moved frequently and kept changing names? I'm curious how you all have it recorded in your trees.
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I would just put in the patronymic name as the name in Family Search Tree (Matti Jacobson) but add the other names (with only one farm name) as "Alternate names": Matti Jacobson Kettula and Matti Jacobson Luoma etc.
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Thank you!!
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In areas where there were not all that many names, it can be very helpful to put as the main name the person's name when he was born and put names used later as alternate names.
For your example, if Matti's family was living at the Kettula farm when he was born and they were all using that as a surname, I would put his first name as Matti Jacobson and last name Kettula. This will help differentiate him from all the other Matti Jacobsons in the parish since that is what will show on all charts and in search result lists. I would also enter first name Matti - last name Jacobson so the hints and duplicates routines will catch all the records that did not use his full name and first name Matti Jacobson - last name Luoma as alternate names.
If his family was not living at the Kettula farm when he was born and they were not using any surname, then he would be just Matti Jacobson at birth and I would enter that as his main name and his other two names are alternate names.
You would never enter Kuttula Luoma as a single last name because he never would have used that.
How to enter names for Nordic relatives really depends on the history and customs at the time and place a person lived and figuring out from source records what names they really used. This can be different for each family you work on. Don't let anyone tell you there are fixed rules about how to enter names or standards that must be followed. It if far more important to record them as historical records show.
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Thank you all very much for the help!!!
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I respectfully disagree; the Finnish culture should be respected, and the main documented name should be in Finnish.
I would keep the main name as "Matti Jaakonpoika Ketula, Luoma" (with Jaakonpoika Ketula, Luoma listed as the last name). I had commas between to signify that he used two surnames during his life - the first listed being what he was born with, the second (and additional) with what he used later in life. Matt Jacobsson, Matti Ketula, Matti Luoma, etc. would be entered in the alternate fields for research purposes.
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Again you are not thinking diachronically......there is a historical time line to this.
I agree with Gordon Collett : "How to enter names for Nordic relatives really depends on the history and customs at the time and place a person lived and figuring out from source records what names they really used" -> except you will rarely learn what names they used themselves, unless you have letters in their own handwriting (not what priests or other officials wrote).
Be also aware that fascination (bordering to manic) with correct spelling is a result of modern state-schooling from the 1800's. In the 1700's you often see that variations in spelling showed you were a man of learning. People could spell words and even their name differently within the same letter.
"Official people" worried about official names (for tax reasons and military conscription), common people knew locally that you were "Red-Mathias/Matti from the oakhill" or whatever and if you moved or got older you got a new name. These names you didn't chose yourself -> see them as somewhat equivalent to army names: Pingo was the name of a certain individual within the Danish Frogmen (He also happened to be crown-prince Frederik).
In genealogy you use the naming custom that was circulating at the time and surnames was not in use back then among common people and the official language was Swedish.
You are trying to project a modern mono-ethnocentric version of Finland within a modern national state forgetting that you have ethnic swedes living in western Finland for a very very long time. Some with Swedish names in finnish church books might actually be ethnically swedes speaking swedish. But in almost all instances we will never know.
Would you also say that since ethnic finnish Karelians are now part of Russia, then all their ancestors back in time should only be entered with Cyrillic names to respect Russian culture? [Same situation to ethnic speaking Swedes in Finland, being an ethnically and linguistic minority].
Practical side:
Genealogy is about finding finding your ancestors names in the original archives. If you enter names in Finnish, but all the archives are written in Swedish, how are people to find the sources?
The name in the church book was the "de jura" name -> that it what we use in genealogy and that has been in use until modern computers took over.
It is the same with named fathers of children: If a man is sentenced through a court case to be the biological father - he is the father for genealogical purposes.
Then later genetic research might be able to prove that a certain person actually had a different father, but then we are in the realm of genetic genealogy, not classical genealogy that is based on historical documents.
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How about some up-votes for: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/107858/handeling-alternate-names-better#latest
I think it would go a long ways to solving part of the disagreement here regarding what a person's "real" name is.
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