Naming Conventions for the Historical Tree on Geni

I have a pretty simple rule for the Maiden and Last name field debate.

If the profile is deceased, then I put in the Maiden name field what the person was born with and in the Last Name field what the person had at death (if Known). This leaves me with profiles that the fields are different, or the same, or even blank if I don't know what last name the profile went by at death.

If the profile is still alive I put what the current last name of the person in the Last Name field. If I don't know it, then I leave it blank.

This works no matter what part of the world the person is from. No it does not solve the issue of names they may have gone by between birth and death, but Geni doesn't have a solution for this yet.

I don't agree with with your system, Jonathan, because it's wrong compared to genealogical standards and becuase of all the extra unnecessary job it's creating. But as long as it works for you, be my guest.

You will have a big job keeping it up to date, though, because of all the namechanges you have to do because of marriages, divorces, remarriages and other reasons for namechanges. While in my system, I don't have to change anything, ever.

How is it wrong compared to Genealogical standards?

My process provides the ability to search and find records that exist at multiple points in a profiles timeline.

Where's all the extra work? In a collaborative environment like Geni I am not the only one available to keep the data on living profiles accurate.

You never update any profiles? They are perfect the first time you add them? Genealogy is a constantly additive process. I expect exactly zero of my profiles to be set in stone.

In respect of living persons or people recently deceased where the close relatives has known that person with a married name all the time I sometimes use the married name in the last name field as long as there is just one marriage.

I did however an "error" once on a deceased woman - I used the married name for the last (third) marriage and received a lot of protests from the children from the two first marriages and they could not agree on her last name (her last marriage was just two years before she died).

The compromise they finally agreed on was to use the birth name and try to reflect the name changes in the time-line by using events.

Each of us will continue to use what we think is best

Untill

We find that a merge with an opposite way of thinking happens.

Then we change the way in which we work

or

We change things to are to suite us.

Thus we have conflict.

Jonathan,

The only problem with leaving the last name blank is ending up with profiles like:

Alice
(no other information)

As a curator, you have just made my work 100,000 more difficult:)

Conceptually to me you're right on the money, and thank you so much for stating it so clearly.

Janet,

As usual, you are wonderful. Thank you for your succinct observation and contribution.

Everyone,

As previously stated, it is impossible to do family research in the United States for women without using the last name they were "known by," and in most cases in my own family tree (primarily descent from England), they were "known by" their husband's last name.

I am sorry if that doesn't meet "international standards" but it is the reality for this country.

The birth name issue is managed by using the "maiden name" field. I believe we are all in agreement on that, so can we consider that case resolved.

I agree the "more than one marriage" issue is klugy in geni. I will take my living mother as a case but am changing a couple of names to protect her privacy. Documentation is by available records retrievable by ancestry.com membership.

Birth: 1920s, United States
Name / residence at birth: Name X, state births listings, 1930 US Census
Name / residence at marriage 1: Name Y, state marriage listings, tax reports, state birth listings of children, telephone directory listings, newspaper report of wedding / birth announcements, article publications
Name / residence at marriage 2: Name Z, wedding announcement
Name / residence at marriage 3: Name Z, wedding announcement

In other words, my mother legally changed her name twice, and kept the second marriage name for her third marriage. Therefore I show her profile as:

maiden name: X
last name: Z

As this is what she has chosen to do.

She has not been "known by" her birth name since the mid 1950s, and her names (in all combinations) are not particularly unusual.

If you have a better solution, have at me.

My examples:

My great-grandmother -
b. Florence Rose Ormsby
m1. William Caywood (my great-grandfather)
m2. Frederick Schramm
known to her descendants as 'Bonna'

She used the name Schramm for many years, and three of her children have that name. Since that is the name on her gravestone, that is what displays - Florence (Ormsby) Schramm. She never used Cornell after her second marriage, so that is not llisted as part of her name.

My Quaker ancestors in the mid-atlantic I tend to list as Emma Smith Gardiner (also my great-grandmother) in the display name. Smith was her maiden name, but I don't put it in parentheses. In earlier years, there was often a son with the 'given' name matching his mother's maiden name. I find keeping these visible help with the family tree building.

I have been trying to 'fix' the medieval lines by losing titles in the name fields, eliminating women's titles, and using birth names in the maiden name field and the last name field. The titled men get their 'professional' title in the suffix field. Until i see fewer merges with mismatched dates and mismatched titles that's my practice. SOMEDAY, the title field or nickname field or occupation field may be sufficient, but it ISN'T now.

I have learned a lot from this discussion, and I am going back to be a fly on the wall. (lurker)

When just the maiden name is listed for a person with a very common name, there have been way too many issues with merging wrong profiles and I have spent weeks dissecting these families, when, if the maiden name and married name was listed, these wrong merges wouldn't have happen. I personally don't care how someone chooses to name the women, but practically having both in the profile keeps accidents from happening during stacking and hot matches. Maybe after all is said and done they can all be changed accordingly by consensus.

Hi Meg,

Thank you for that point. Those of us who try and straighten out the tree need all available help from the profiles to do so.

However I must raise the point that *reverting* needs to be a family line / historical issue. I would take great offense at a well meaning person changing the name of an ancestress *I know* was known by her married name but I have not yet documented to meet *their* standards, as an example.

I need to see maiden names in my tree, so that's how I have it set. What I don't get is why GENI can't show a profile 'to be merged' with the same amount of info of the main profile (on a merge page) since usually the info is available on the profile to be merged. GENI is very, very slow for me - it might take me two hours to make 8 merges by having to open up every profile.

Margaret and Erica: The main problem with married name is that to many people, especially people from the US, are adding a married name to people without having any knowledge/documentation if she had or used a married name.

That is what I call fabrication of facts and why I want people to use the birth name.

The worst cases I have seen is in the Nordic lines where a nickname or a patronymic name is used on the men and their wifes and daughters is assigned it too.

In Denmark it was first allowed around 1880 and in Norway in 1923 (and the tradition with married name is almost gone again now).

As you know a nickname is something you get and not a name marry to or inherit.
A very funny example: Many of the duplicates of Sweyn I "Forkbeard", king of Denmark, Norway & England's wifes like Świętosława «Gunhilda» Piast have been named something like "Gunhild Tveskæg", - meaning "Gunhild with the pitchfork-style moustache" ;-) LOL

This article can be enlightful when it comes to what is common and legal in different countries about namechanges because of marriage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_name

I see that it's lacking in citations, so I'm not going to say that what is in the article is correct. It's been educational for me, hope it will be so for you to.

English speaking countries, except Scotland and Quebec in Canada, are basically the only ones with the tradition of the newly married wife to take her husbands last name. So, in the world, this tradition is in a vast minority. More or less the rest of Europe and the spanish/portuguese speaking countries, the wife kept her last name.

Also notice what is written in the last paragraph about Genealogy.

I very much enjoy learning about the naming conventions and the silly mistranslations that result when you don't take the trouble to learn them.

I have been pretty scrupulous, despite my distaste for changing someone else's data input, in changing De to de and moving it from the middle name field to the last name field, as a less funny and much more annoying example.

But let me give you pause going back to my mother's example.

If you insist on a "rule" that in her "genealogical" / documentation database, she is only known by "proven" (according to what standards?) information, you erase 60 years of a hard working professional identity.

My father's professional identity is of course knowable under his birth name, and similar retrievable documentation from ancestry.com. Yet if we follow yours and Remi's argument, you have just created a sexist situation for both of their descendants (their grandchildren ... and part of the reason for the geni database).

How is that all fair to 51% of the world?

So I, as someone who only speaks English, work hard to follow the conventions of other languages and countries, but the same courtesy is not accorded me in return?

Remi,

Geni is not a genealogical program. David K. made the point in another discussion: it is a documentation database. As such that is a work in progress. Allow me the ability to sketch out my family history without academic standard documentation if you would be so kind.

Publishers have publication guidelines for a reason. Geni has no such requirement nor is it in the mission statement.

Geni states their mission clearly: build a shared family tree.

Informative article, Remi, thank you.

Erica,

we have had the same discussion with the same arguments you are giving in the genealogical forums here in Norway. You are now talking about a feeling, the feeling of fairness, feeling of erasure of identity and the feeling of sexism.

I am not able to have an argument over your feelings. You feel, what you feel, but your feelings does not add anything to this discussion.

It doesn't make it any more right or wrong what ever you, me or anyone else feel. This is about what is the genealogical standard of using last names in a genealogical database (not just Geni), and the standard is to write both male and female with their birth/baptism names, and doing it this way you do not have to change the name in your database again, ever. You can of course add more names and different names, im my genealogical program there are 19 alternatives for adding other names, and I'm using a lot of them, but the main name in the database is always his/her birthname.

And Jonathan,

The genealogical standard on how to write a persons main name in your genealogical database is to use the persons birth name. All other names used by that person later in life are secondary, and should be written as alternate names in your database. It's just too bad that the program Geni isn't up to the task. But in your own personal genealogical database program on your own personal computer, you should have this ability. (You are using your own genealogical program, aren't you?)

In my personal database all the names of a person are searchable. On Geni I find the females with no problem because I always use their birthname if I know it. So finding the profile is not a problem, when you have found the profile, the information in it is not hard to find either.

The extra work is that when someone in your database gets married or divorced, you (or someone else) have to change the lastr name of that person, while I don't have to do any namechange at all. I just add the event to the persons life, so your way has more work in it. We genealogists have so much to do in our genealogy, that making more work than necessary should be avoided.

Of course I update profiles, and they are absolutely not perfect from the beginning. Nothing is set in stone, but my point was that you have to change the names of the persons in your database when they get married while I don't. When I have found the birth-/baptizmrecord of a person in my database, I don't have to change the main name of that person ever.

On Geni there can be a few exception like the norwegian prince Olav (later king Olav V), he was baptized Alexander Edward Christian Frederik and was then a prince of Denmark, but when his father prince Christian Frederik Carl Georg Valdemar Axel (he was known under the name prins Carl af Danmark, later he became kong Haakon VII av Norge). I would in these few circumstances write his baptized name as his main name and written Olav V and Haakon VII in Display name, but there are so few persons that changed names like this, so it really shouldn't be a problem.

Remi,

You've made my argument. Geni is not a genealogical program. In fact it's not even really a documentation system although it is growing those capabilities nicely.

To borrow Pam Wilson's term, it is a collaborative knowledge system. For effective collaboration you need *all* the information you can collect, shared and easily available.

Your way of doing it would result in *less* easily available knowledge with *more* difficulty.

It's not a *feeling* of sexism. It IS sexist. My mother had the right, legally, by custom, by tradition, and by religion, to change her name, or not. Your system takes away that right.

OK, Erica. Feel what you do, and do whatever you feel like doing, as long as it works for you.

Of course Geni is a genealogical program, it's just not good enough yet. You can see that in their company summary here: http://www.geni.com/company/about_us?ref=pf

And I think your way of doing it will result in more difficulty and less easily available knowlegde and will do it a lot harder to search for the persons in the database. But you have the right to do it the way you wish to, even if that way is more difficult and makes your genealogy harder.

Of course it is a feeling of sexism you have, but that is your perogative too. You can of course feel whatever you like. Your mother had of course the right, legally, by custom, by tradition, and by religion, to change her name, or not, but that doesn't change the fact that in the genealogical standard it is common and right to use a persons birth name as the main name in the genealogical database, and that system doesn't take away anyone of your mothers rights to change her name as often as she wish. We just add all of her namechanges under the tab "Alternate names" (which I wish Geni could get) and still keep her birth name as ther main one.

But, do wathever you like. I see that you don't feel like writing a persons name in a genealogical database according to genealogical standards. So be it.
It's not my problem, I just tried to tell you how genealogist usually does it, but it's up to you to choose wether you will do it your own way, or the standard way.

But as a Curator, you have a certain obligation to uphold, and one of them I think should be to adhere to common international genealogical standards, which every Curator should do.

I am not arguing that your way is not the international genealogical standard for recording a pedigree. I am arguing that it is not currently possible to do so in that manner in the geni platform.

I choose to work with the system, work around its shortcomings, celebrate its richness and strengths, and look forward to forthcoming enhancements and releases.

In a database it is far easier to hide what you might find to be extraneous information than to never have it entered in the first place. As a curator, I feel a greater obligation to help ensure as much data as possible gets filled in as completely as possible. If that is information you do not find useful luckily you can choose to ignore it.

Remi, what you're really looking for is a "display" option, like the one to show or hide maiden or middle names. You just want it available on the last name field.

That's a mask in the user interface, and not a database issue. Have you requested it as an enhancement?

Remi,
I have been following this discussion on and off, since it was created when we realized that we needed a system that EVERYONE can live with.

I have been doing genealogy for 25 years now, at varying levels of professionalism (does writing a 250 page book count?). I must say though, that many/most "common international genealogical standards" are more about "in-group" snobbery than anything else. Some fools STILL insist on ALL-CAPS last names, when this "standard" was created long ago for PAPER records, before we started using computers for genealogy. Genealogy belongs under the umbrella of "Humanities", NOT Exact Sciences. As such it will always be about flexible people...

Also, another thing you must realize, is that the VAST majority of people doing genealogy at whatever level, will NOT meet your "professional standards". These are the user-base of Geni. So we have to work with them, not impose a system that they at best, won't use or more likely, walk away from. Someone on the Forum was just complaining that Geni does NOT make it *compulsory* to fill out your profiles!!?? How realistic is that, do you think???

I do very much appreciate the education in differing languages / historical periods / country customs I've gained on this thread, and I hope we all continue to learn from each other.

I think that's what they mean by "collaborative knowledge system."

I have barely been following this thread - because it's gone too far.

For males, last name is generally going to be their birth name, but since people change their names, it may not be. It should be the name that they decided on - so that's the last name at death or current last name if alive.

Many female's change their last name. That is why Geni has a maiden name field. Maiden name will be the last name at birth and the last name field, like with males, will be the name that they decided on, so the last name at death.

Remi, it's unreasonable to ask people like me, my mother or any other person on Geni that has changed their name to suck it up and to put a name that the no longer use in as their main name in Geni. My full name is John Brendan Molloy. John was given to me because my father and grandfather are John. They didn't call me John even from day 1. According to your argument, I should be John Molloy in Geni so that you'll know what name I was born into. My drivers license has Brendan Molloy, I use Brendan Molloy and Geni has Brendan Molloy. After I die, if my Geni account is changed to John Molloy, that would be unacceptable.

Erica / Brendan
I think that you have both missed the point of the naming convention.
You have overlooked that we are “talking” about the “Naming Conventions for the Historical Tree” and not living people.
Taking that into account you should try and use the convention as much as possible in the modern period.

... as long as you don't fabricate a fact like a married name. Talking about sexism - that is definitely sexism, - wiping put a womans identity just because you assume and don't have any sources showing a married name.

Wow, so this is the thread where everyone discusses one of my favorite pet peeves. It just hit my discussion cue this morning.

My take on naming conventions:

Males: No maiden names. I may be traditional in this sense, but we guys aren't maids. If we lived in a society where it was customary for males to take on the female family name at marriage (and I'm not saying that somewhere out there one might not find a society that does exactly that, but that's not the case for any of the profiles I deal with from Europe or North America) then this field should be filled in. I've seen this field used as a way of hiding titles in names, etc., and it's more annoying than clever. Unless there is a fairly good reason for using the field for a male, I clear it when I run across it.

Females: Use of married name. I'm not at all familiar with "international genealogical conventions". I only know that on the gravestone, it's usually the last married name that the deceased is known as. "Mi abuelita," my paternal grandmother, for instance was not known as Alvina Valdez (her maiden name) or Alvina Valdez-Trujillo-Angel-Alexander, she was known as Alvina Alexander. Just because my last name is Angel doesn't mean hers has to be on my tree. In short, I use the gravestone name for females.

Titles: I've had to compromise a lot on this one, and I firmly believe that titles should not be part of the name. I'm one of those who thinks there should be a separate field for titles. When the occupation used to be displayed, I figured that to be the best place for a title, since it is more an occupation. But sometimes titles become part of a person's identity, so I didn't feel that I could be that strict on that personally preferred convention. But I would advocate for a separate displayed field (something that doesn't show up if empty).

There are all kinds of different ways to display names that I've run across that really do annoy me. The placement of "de", "von", "van", or "of" in the middle name field, the placement of a title in the suffix field, they are all out there. (I'm guessing the middle name thing is to populate the field to prevent someone easily spreading through merges a title in the mostly empty middle name field, but for me, that seems like just laziness.)

Then there is also the issue, on the historical profiles, of which language to use. Charlemagne's wife is a classic example of this. English uses Hildegarde of Vinzgouw, French uses Hildegarde de Vinzgouw, and German uses Hildegarde von Anglachgau. She was German, from Swabia (more specifically, Anglachgau, which is a tiny region south of Speyer - it took hours figuring that one out), so likely she would have gone by von Anglachgau. But because most of the Geni users are English speakers, she ended up with Vinzgouw.

The early Russian leaders were also difficult to deal with. You have a whole other alphabet to deal with there. I had been putting the name in Russian, and then in parentheses in Latin letters, usually English. It makes for a very awkward name when concatenating. I'd like to see that somehow worked out into a convention that makes sense (other than forcing a less confused variant into the Display Name), as I have more modern versions of that same issue on my wife's side of the tree (her family is from Belarus).

Anyway, that's my step too far while waking up in the morning, well, it's afternoon now here in Chile. Ah, yes, that reminds me... most of the people down here use the Spanish convention of having both the mother's family name and the father's family name listed in first reference. I gather it's the father's family name only in second reference, but I've also seen mother's family name listed in second reference. But I'm sure a Spanish genealogist would insist that my name be Ben Angel y Jackson, even though I go by just my father's last name (in accordance with my birth culture). Come to think of it, so too do most employers down here. Funny.

Ben, I use the maiden name field for males when the last name is spelled differently as I see it in parentheses. So I might put Veasey in the maiden name field and then I'd see "John Thomas Veazey (Veasey)" in my tree. Not sure if it's accepted but that's how I do it.

Bjorn, I think Erica and I are the last women you would find on Earth who would subordinate a woman's rightful place on this planet to a man in any way, shape, or form - including taking his name as her own.

Don't forget that most women have been 'stuck' with their fathers' names since birth. How many people do you know who were given their mother's birth name? Pre-1950, that is.

Here's a funny story. I'll change the surnames to protect the guilty. ;) I had a friend who was named Patricia Smith but she only wanted to be called Pat. She met and married a man named Patrick Jones, who also went by Pat. They decided that neither of them should give up their name so they each hypenated their names. Now they're BOTH Pat Smith-Jones. (Now that I think about it, one could have been Pat Smith-Jones and the other could have been Pat Jones-Smith. Hmmm.)