Naming Conventions for the Historical Tree on Geni

"Ярослав мудрый" (his right name) is a good example, at now we have: ЯРОСЛАВ "den Vise" Av Kiev Рюрикович I (Of Kiev)
It is not in russian it is not in English it is some mutation.
we must have: Yaroslav/Ярослав Vladimirovich/Владимирович Ryurikovich/Рюрикович
I think transliteration (not translate) is right now.
so we have Name, Patronicname(in midlename) and Lastname
In nicknames we can have all other varations like simple "Ярослав Мудрый" or "Yaroslav the Wise"
my propose is a mark in nicnames languge like: "rus:Ярослав Мудрый" or "eng:Yaroslav the Wise" or "bul:велик княз ЯРОСЛАВ" . if it is clear next is not so clear. take for example his dauther Anastasia
Anna of Kiev, Queen Consort of the Franks
she was Queen of Hungary as the wife of King Andrew the White. and there we must define how we write: English/Russian or English/Hungarian or Hungarian/Russian (how I know Hungarians use Latin alphabet)
at that moment this profle writen in double notation"english/cyrilic(not russian)"

I am agree with Валерий Кузмин. There is a nesciaence of the problem with the languages and the alphabet systems. (English is not = Latin, Cirilic is not = Russian) . Where is the Greek alphabet in the discussion?

Валерий Кузьмин
The hungarian language use the Latin alphabet.
See:
http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungari_keel
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Венге́рский_язы́к

FARKAS Mihály László (from Hungary)

I have read through the various discussions on naming conventions. I certainly agree with Валерий Кузьмин that the Geni software (ultimately) needs to incorporate provision for different alphabets and, if there are automatic ways to translate between alphabets as he suggests, then this technique could be used.

I am happy to ensure that no language versions are lost when resolving the data conflicts. The decision to make is whether or not to include two (or more!) variants within the name (or display name). I have looked a number of examples and I have to say that I actually prefer Shmuel's technique of including multiple alphabets in the name - e.g. http://www.geni.com/people/Abraham-%D7%90%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%94%D7%9D-%... although I accept that this could lead to very long names in many cases - I just guess I prefer the idea of being able to recognise the name of the profile in the tree view without having to took at the nicknames field - but I am willing to be persuaded otherwise. How do you feel about this, Валерий Кузьмин?

Yes, at that moment we have not choise,
we can define for example at first place we put name in language and alphabet where he was born, at second it latin equivalent. maybe not thru slash but in square bracket like
Валерий [Valeriy]
[Adam] אדאמ
ბაგრათიონ [Bagration]
Αφροδίτη[Afrodίth],

PS In Shmuel's technique Latin name actually go After national ;)

why in braket? bcs when we see on the long name:
Валерий Павлович Кузьмин
with slash its looked like:
Валерий / Valeriy Павлович / Pavlovich Кузьмин / Kuz'min
with brackets I think a bit more readable:
Валерий[Valeriy] Павлович[Pavlovich] Кузьмин[Kuz'min]

Валерий[Valeriy] Павлович[Pavlovich] Кузьмин[Kuz'min]

much better will be

Валерий Павлович Кузьмин - Valeriy Pavlovich Kuz'min or
Валерий Павлович Кузьмин / Valeriy Pavlovich Kuz'min или
Валерий Павлович Кузьмин [Valeriy Pavlovich Kuz'min]

PS! use Chrome - Chrome shows all URL in unicode letters
PS! don't use auto-transcription between CYR-LAT - there is NO trasncription between different letters

Shalom Валерий Кузьмин, the often mentioned Shmuel here (for some reason I had unfollowed this discussion).

I find your brackets much harder to read, as they look too much like a letter. The "shape" of the / makes more space between the names and is less ambiguous.

My "technique" was created primarily for the Biblical Tree, which initially had English and Hebrew. Now some of the profiles also have Arabic, being [also] sourced from the Kuran.
1) There is an actual *technical* reason why the "Latin" alphabet MUST come first. This has to do with how browsers handle right-to-left alphabets, such as... Hebrew and Arabic. If you put either of these first, the whole thing becomes "impossible" to edit.
2) This is ALSO another reason to prefer the '/' over ANY bracket form ( { [ When using bi-directional text, we often have problems with these, as the browser tries to reverse them as well, creating a mess.
3) But from experience, the MOST important reason to use the "English" spelling first is because English speakers seem to be the LEAST tolerant of other languages. If that "foreign nonsense" comes first, they are more likely to delete it. Really. This happened a LOT to me. People even refused to apologize for it.

Of course, 1 & 2 do not apply to sets of names that don't include right-to-left scripts, but I personally, would prefer a single convention throughout the historical parts of the tree, as hard as that might be to achieve.

Someone asked about using the Greek alphabet. We should in theory use this for the Trojan kings and ancestry, but no-one has bothered to enter them so far, or at least hasn't merged them into the main lines.

Lastly, as in the Bible Tree there are no LAST names (or even middle names), extending my format to a period that does can get a bit messy, because you'd need multiple slashes, one for each name part. So what I now suggest people do is also use the Display name field, which would hold the complete names in all languages, separated by a single / Using my own name as an example, it would look like this:

First Name: Shmuel Aharon / שמואל אהרן
Last Name: Kam / קם
Display Name: Shmuel Aharon Kam / שמואל אהרן קם
.

Finnaly I understand why I dont seen Display name. In my preferensed was checked checkbox "Ignore display name".

I need help! what to do with Russian princess Born in Greece? write it in 3 language is a bit lot.

Good question! It seems to me that writing the 3 names maybe the only solution for the time being - and hope that Geni can implement some form of multilanguage system as soon as possible. Speaking personally (as an idiot who only speaks one language!), I would just plead that you keep an English version in there. What do others think?

Stay tuned, see my answer here: http://www.geni.com/discussions/6000000008581721548?msg=60000000086...

Can't wait to see multi-name support!!! (and it's needed for much more than languages).

In the meantime, let's enter all the names we can, and let's use the About field to explain what we're doing and why.

(for the old Norse names it would be really cool to write them in runes - but for most people, we have no sources for how to write them in runes - the oldest manuscripts of Snorre already use Latin script. No source - no entry!)

AWKWARD NAMES - temporary

As there are multiple lines with errors and wrong connections, you will occasionally see names containing things like
* Josceline Sainfrida's daughter
* Josceline Aveline's daughter
* Doda's father
* NO parents
* Berengar Do NOT merge
* Gunnor WORK in PROGRESS
etc

We all agree that these are ugly - but sometimes they are necessary and they all signal that work is going on in the area or that there are multiple issues.

For some areas like the Anglo-Saxons most (!) of the material entered to Geni is wrong to start with (bad Gedcoms found on the internet etc) and thus these "names" are necessary tools to clean up the area and avoid wrong merges.

Please respect these, and contact Curators (or managers if these are active users) if you have questions about these "names".

AMKB:
In your opening post to this discussion group you wrote:
"Titles usually go in the Last Name field"

I don't understand the rationale for not putting titles in the Suffix field.

That was not an option when she wrote that.

Remember the pull-down menu where you could only choose between Jr/Sr/I/II/III/IV and similar?

This option is by the way still present when adding new profiles and should be corrected.

Should we than make this a general guideline, to use the suffix field?
I agree that the initial add dialog has an issue here, but that isn't a show stopper.

I assume titles also includes all the of X, auf X, zu X, to X, af X variations.

TITLES
If there is already a known surname/last name, then we can now put titles in the suffix field, since this is now open for free editing.

Titles would look like:

Konge af Danmark
Duc de Normandie
Comtesse d'Aumâle
King of Scots
Herzog von Bayern

etc

In all I can buy most of the name for royaltees suggestion although I think there might be some difficulties (i.e. when should Lothringen be Lorraine).

However I think it is a major mistake to put the title in the last name. I think the title should be in the occupation field. The reason for this is that being king, duke, count from the beginning was a occupation that was given and some times taken back. By putting it in the occupation field you, which in any case you should do because there might be several titles for different periods, you avoid discrepancies in the titles.

Well, what would you for example put in the last name field of King Harald V of Norway?

He does not have a last name, as simple as that, even if someone insert Oldenbürg or something similar.

In any case every rule have exceptions, like the name fields of his father king Olav V of Norway. Technically correct is should probably be "Alexander Edward Christian Frederik af Danmark" with result that nobody would know who this person is.

There might not be a name in every case. In the Harald case I would have it:

First name: Harald V
Last Name: av Norge Oldenburg
occupation: King in Norway 1991-

Dukes of Austria could be Babenberg or Habsburg,
There are Habsburgs in Austria, Spain, Italy ..
There are other families that are present in many areas as
Anjou, Arpad, Ascania,Capet, Carolingians, Hohenstaufen, Hohenzollern,
Wittelbach..etc

This has gone on too far.
We all use our own languages for names of our ancestors.
It is all very well for a naming conevtions to state that we should use the names used in the culture at the time but and it is a big but, what if you have two nations with two langauges?
IE "Canute" and "Cnut"
Cnut the Great (Old English: Cnūt; Old Norse: Knūtr inn rīki; Danish: Knud den Store or Knud II[1] c. 985 or 995 – 12 November 1035), also known as Canute or Knut, was a Viking king of Denmark (Cnut II), England, Norway and parts of Sweden.

William the Conqueror –
did he speek
1 English
2 Old English
3. French
4. Old French
5. Norman French
And what was the language used at court?
Which court – England or Normandy?

We have another problem with place names.
I would like to use the place name as it was when the person lived. Not just the place name but the county name as well.
This presents a problem as place names change over the years.
Look at what happened after WW1 to Hungary. It lost two-thirds of it land and all the place names outside of the newer Hungary changed their names/spellings.
In India thay are changing the place names to what they think they ought to have been before the Raj.
Take a look at North-Eastern France in an historical atlas and see how the boundary changed over time.
If you change a profile to agree with your view – another user has the right to change it again.

Reg,
that is the whole point of having a convention, so that people NOT do whatever they want, but agree to abide by a system that is a compromise that everybody can live with. Some of the historical profiles have 300 managers EACH, from all over the world. So we pretty much need such a system. No-one is asking you do this in your immediate family...

Now that we have Curators who can LOCK Master-Profiles, we could in theory, enforce such a naming system, but then it would NOT be a "convention", but rather a dictatorship and would make life on Geni harder for ALL. We do NOT want that.

Well said--thank you for explaining that so well, Shmuel.

Would you care to explain WHY you think it doesn't work? Because of the different multiple languages? If you think THAT is an issue look at the mythical kings of Ireland, each with 30+ variants to their names.

Reg,
we don't actually list all variants in the name field. We only put the main/most common ones there and the rest in the "nicknames" field.

But let's turn this around, do you have a better idea than simply for everybody to do as they please?

The Naming Conventions are now available here in a more systematic form.
http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions

We can still use this thread to discuss them.

@Reg: as long as you have no better suggestions there is not much to say to your complaints. The current system works.

I am sorry to have mislead you in my statements.

It is not that the “Naming Convention” its self does not work, it is not working in such as that people are not using it correctly.

Perhaps it should be e-mailed to all members to read so that they can all read and understand what they are supposed to do.

After taking that into account that users may still want to do “Their own thing” rather than follow the guidelines.

I am more concerned about historical place naming.

Which I find Geni has a lot to answer for.

As I outlined in an earlier posting – A country name depends upon the time at which an event took place. If an event took place in are we call New England between 1650 and 1750 it is wrong to have the place name showing “USA” or “United States” as this is only used from 1776.

But the “Naming Convention” is only meant to deal with the names of people and not geographical locations.
I have to ask – is there any “Naming Convention” for place names and if not then why?

I believe that you are absolutely correct, Reg, in that we also need Place Name Conventions. The place name for where a life event occurred (birth, marriage, death) should match the name of the place at that historical period in time. It seems odd to see a medieval person marked as being born in the UK, for example.

However, this is very dependent upon a person's geographical knowledge, and unfortunately, many (I daresay most) people are not extremely knowledgeable about contemporary geography, much less the changing terrain of Lotharingia or Austrasia, for example. Most people (including myself!) would need to keep a historical atlas of Europe close at hand to keep up with the shifting borders.

But a Place Name Conventions guide, perhaps with a brief overview of the major timeline points and a reference to some online sources for determining the proper place name of a locale in a given time period, would be quite helpful. Would you like to draft one?