First name "Degener" and Artificial Intelligence
During a genealogists' meeting the rumour was reported that in the Rhine Valley (including parts of Vorarlberg and St.Gallen) there was a habit of giving illegitimate children selected first names. As none of the attendees had examples, ChatGBT was asked - see response (in German) on https://www.geneal-forum.com/phpbb/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=32642 (response added here, as you will not be able to see it on geneal-foum without being registered).
This included a statement that such selected first names were given in order not to stigmatize illegitimate children - which, as these names obviously would be known to everyone, would have done exactly the opposite!
Examples given were:
"illegitimus": this is Latin and often used in church records to mark illegitimate children (you all will be aware of this) - but it definitely is not a first name.
"****": originally used for illegitimate children in the Nobility of the Middle Ages. Then not really deprecating … later the application was extended to illegitimate children in general and finally became an expletive. Could be called a byname/nickname(?), but not a first name.
"Degener": and this is the reason for my post. It is a common surname in German speaking regions - have never seen it used as first name. https://de.namespedia.com/details/Degener states that Degener as first name was found in the USA in 25 cases as first name, accounting for 3% of all hits.
Now - ChatGBT relies on information found on the internet - so this might be the background for the response. I would like to know actual examples: does anyone know of actual occurrences of Degener as first name in the USA?
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Obviously my above post was censored: one word was replaced by "****". The word may be understood today as a negative characterization - but in the genealogy of the medieval nobility it was a normal, non-discriminatory term - and happened to be used by ChatGBT. If you are curious now, you can find the term ("B.....") in the above screenshot in the first line of the second paragraph.
I assume that the censorship was done automatically by an algorithm that was not programmed with the technical terms used in the genealogy of medieval nobility as exceptions. 😉
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