Source Linker automatically assigning mother's maiden name to children
In the collection "Sweden, Household Examination Books, 1874-1931," there is a problem with source linker and the source title automatically assigning the mother's maiden name as the family surname for all of the children in a household.
For example on the record here, the parent's names are Johan Andersson and Klara Matilda Larsdotter. On the view record page and on source linker, all the children have the mother's surname "Larsdotter" applied to them. At first, I assumed an indexer incorrectly indexed the household. But instead, when you go to edit the index it correctly shows each child without a surname (as it appears on the original document). So the problem isn't the original indexer.
On this record here, I observed the exact same issue. In this instance, even though the original index doesn't record a surname for the children, I went to source linker to attach the record and all of a sudden the name Johansson (the mother's surname) has been assigned to each child. I don't know where exactly in the process this is happening. But at some point the system automatically assigns the mother's surname.
The problem is that when you add the child from the source linker page it prompts you to add the child using the mother's surname. It is leading to many Swedish children being entered into the tree with an incorrect surname, preventing further record hints from being found, and confusing users.
One might assume that it should be the father's surname that should be applied to all of the children, but this would be incorrect as well. In Sweden, patronymics was in use until about 1880 when the practice slowly changed. After 1880, many Swedish children do take their father's surname as their own.
I think that the system should not automatically apply any surnames to Swedish children found in the Household Examination records collection who don't already have a specified surname on the original record.