Consensus on using Maiden Names

It must be my optimistical personality.

But I more or less "rested my case" with my comment of 6:22 pm CEST, the last ones are a direct answer to Terrys question, and a comment on yours and Marys comments.

So keep up the good work, and do your genealogy as good as possible.

PS! I will probably get depressed if I lost my optimistical nature and personality. And I know I would not be good as a politician, because I could never say anything else than what I'm convinced would be the best way to go.

Remi - I think highly of you and like your optimism. I applaud your commitment and your high standards and great knowledge in your area. Politics is about compromise and as painful as compromise is, it will move us forward and off these unresolvable and divisive issues.

So when I asked Remi: "Can you give a single example why we should ignore the maiden name field and instead use it for the Last Name? An example that is still valid in the modern age of digitalization?"

The best supporting reason he could come up with was:

"Yes, Stephen I can. Take a couple with the names Peter Smith and Lisa Smith and tell what you will do to find Lisa's ancestry? Take a look at this page with birth certificates from Arizona and tell me what you see according to the use of surnames, Stephen?"

Yep, Lisa (Simpson) Smith is clearly a woman born Lisa Simpson, who's married name became Lisa Smith. You have expertly demonstrated why all pieces of information are necessary. I honestly don't understand how this could be confusing to anyone.

And yes, birth certificates would clearly not include a married name, but merely the person's maiden name.

This is so simple I almost don't understand what we're talking about.

This is a data display issue. I understand that you'd have to change your 1,000 profiles, but sticking with an incorrect system is an example of the sunk cost logical fallacy. - http://www.skepdic.com/sunkcost.html

And if this is the best supporting reasons for your methodology, then I think we've come to a clear consensus on this issue.

I've not been following this discussion recently but as Remi and Erica alluded, we've been having a parallel discussion on the curator's forum. So far, most of the curators who have weighed in are in basic agreement about the following proposal (with some slight differences of opinions about labels):

(A) Remove the gender distinction between revealing the "maiden name" field

(B) Change the label of Maiden Name field to Birth or Original Surname. Later on, when it is technically possible, rearrange the fields so that this name is placed immediately after the given names (first and middle), since it is chronologically a person's original name.

(c) Change the label of Last Name field to Preferred Surname [and eventually create the ability to add as many Other Surnames field entry boxes as needed]

(d) Rename the Nickname field to "Also Known As" and restore it to the Basic Profile Information.

(e) Make sure that each of these fields is searchable in the basic Geni search.

B - Cool, Birth name is the definition of Maiden name, so changing the name is fine with me :)

C - Yep, Last Name / Married Name / Preferred Name are all just ways to say the same thing

E - Awesome! Hopefull the drop down quick search menu will include both married names and maiden names, something I've been waiting for.

Thanks Pam!

Pam, any talk of adding title fields at the same time?

Eldon, there has been a lot of talk about changing the field configuration (which we've been told is quite complex), but in this proposal I wanted to focus on a "quick fix" that could be implemented fairly easily.

OK I was hoping. It's something we need. These are the kind of improvements we need instead of messing with privacy which was basically fine.

There is a need for name fields in "other" languages - i.e. -Hebrew/Arabic/other non-Latin languages

Yaacov - we have been putting in names in other languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. We are creative and most of use either put the English in the display name or some put the English in the name field along with the Hebrew.

Hisham I (Abu al-Walid Hisham) al-Rida ibn Abdul Rahman emir de Córdoba and others from the al-Andalus project are examples from Arabic. Arabic names are still a work in progress, e.g., where in various name fields to put the parts of an Arabic name.

There are numerous examples of Hebrew and a naming standard for Hebrew as well.

Hatte - the common method of writing multilingual names doesn't display good when the language used is written RTL, and in the tree view.
having dedicated name fields per language will give us many new options

Yaakov - There are other issues with Arabic in tree view as well, since many applications do not display Arabic script correctly.

I am not an expert in the issues of Arabic script and how it's corrupted or displayed badly in various applications unfortunately. I could probably locate experts but I was waiting for them to emerge among the Geni users.

There are several curators who weighed in on Hebrew well before I joined Geni.

هشام أبو الوليد «الرضا» بن عبد الرحمن, أمير قرطبة

is how the profile above looks in the display name but in the tree view the application pulls apart the letters and writes each in its standalone variant, which is usually not correct, since most of the letters are in their connected or final form.

It is like talking to a brick wall,
Erica, add me to 'over my dead body' team

Another dead body to walk over here ;-)

Stephen, my example to you was hypothetical with no real persons names, so where you got the maiden name Simpson from I don't know. I wanted you to try to find a girls ancestry without having the maiden name in the profile, which you obviously didn't understand. Are you able to do that?

I am not. On the other hand, I'm quite able to find the same girls descendants without having the girls name after marriage in her profile, since I will find that name in her husbands profile.

You just proved to me that you couldn't do it without the maiden name. Now tell me which name is more important.

I can see that you don't understand this, since you stick to your display argument, this hasn't anything to with how things are displayed, this is genealogy! And it's not only my 1000 profiles that are using the system of genealogists, it's almost every profile of a person living in Northern Europe before ca. 1900, and it's almost every profile added by a person using the system genealogists are using.

And, I'm sorry to say, there is no consensus, and there will probably never be one. There are too many on Geni that want to write names like genealogists do, and there are too many people that write names in other ways.

I hope Erica reads your comment about birth certificates, since she is adamant in arguing that she has problems finding maiden names in birth certificates.

No you misunderstood me Remi. I have no problem finding a birth name in a birth certificate. I have a problem finding the birth in order to look up the birth certificate and find the parents names.

In researching my family tree I go backwards. The last record (in other words, the first) I usually have is the will, obituary, cemetery record, social security death record. In the United States, in those records you will find the woman listed by her legal name at death. Sometimes if you are lucky you can figure out the birth name from the obituary but Stephen posted at a more common case - where you can't. Sometimes if you are lucky you can figure out the birth name from the will - but more often you cannot.

However once you have the husband's name you can search for the marriage record, and there, again if you are lucky and it exists, you can find the birth name.

Hope this clarifies.

Oh sorry Remi you are trying to say that the birth certificate lists by mother's birth name?

Did you notice that Arizona birth certificates - in this format of listing both - cover the period 1878-1936 only? 58 years?

Yes and no. :-) Didn't look that thoroughly through the records.

Serious question for people who have been editing profiles to put maiden names in the surname fields:

Have you thought about how, if Geni does implement the change you're asking for and reverses the fields, it's going to reverse all of that work you've done and mess up your records even more? And that you're going to have to go back through and re-edit every single one of those profiles? Wouldn't that fact alone be enough justification for people inputting information according to the form for now?

I guess that's what I don't understand. If we want to have a discussion about the "right" way to do it, that's one thing. But with people continually going ahead and changing them in advance...boy, that just seems like a big mess waiting to get even worse.

Ashley, in terms of reversing the fields, my hope would be that the information stored in the fields would not be lost but would stay in the same fields--they would just be placed differently on the form. This would cause no need for re-editing.

As I see it, entering "maiden" names in surname fields is perfectly valid for all those people, men and many women, who have retained their birth name throughout their lives (or for whom we have no evidence that they changed their names at marriage).

We also have naming conventions that vary from culture to culture and era to era. When I am working in America from the 1600s forward, I respect that the naming convention is to enter the married name of a woman under Last Name (in most cases).

However, in medieval Europe prior to that time (through the 1500s) our convention is to NOT assume that a woman took her husband's surname, and so the woman's family name (of origin) is entered as both her Last Name and Maiden Name. When I am working on medieval profiles and come across someone who has entered a "married name" for a 13th century woman, I will change it.

Hope that helps, from a curator's perspective.

Pam: No, what I'm trying to say -- and perhaps I'm being unclear -- is that a lot of people are currently putting maiden names in the surname field, while others are putting married names in the surname field. If people are asking for a mass change, it's going to "undo" one or the other. (Does anyone know what I'm saying? Can you help me explain better? :))

I understand, Ashley. These are inconsistencies with our usage of the current Geni fields that we hope will become less inconsistent if the fields are relabeled. Of course, the institution of any convention or standard will mean that all those profiles not currently following the standard will eventually need to be changed to meet it. That's (unfortunately) just the nature of developing a system like this as we go. ;^)

There have been edit wars on names for women. Over the last year I have gotten many contradictory messages on how to resolve data correctly. It does turn out I was right the first time in my assumptions: i.e., use the fields as set up by geni. But it's no wonder my wrist is sprained as a result. :)

Yes, I finally bowed out of the edit wars since the two camps were canceling each other out and I had better things to do than to change surname on married females over and over.

Some people think all married woman should have their husband's name as the surname. And these people are wrong for eras and cultures where women did NOT take their husband's name.

Some people think all married woman should only ever have birth name (maiden name) entered in the surname field. If that were the case, then why would Geni have two fields?? And why discard important information, for which there are documents related to the field? Anyway, some people go around and change all the surnames of women to birth name (maiden name). And they are going against our naming standards and Geni's specified data fields and field definitions, for the periods where women DID take their husband's name.

I couldn't keep up with these two opposed camps. They wore me down.

Hatte, I am sorry, but I have never heard anyone saying that 'all' married women should have husband's name, jut that those who did, should have that recorded.

Yes, J. Ashley, we do know that some of us probably has to move surnames one way or the other. There are several thousands profiles that have used married name in "Last name", and maiden name in "Maiden name", and there are several thousands profiles that have use names at birth (or maiden name) in the "Last name" field and left the "Maiden name" field blank. The Geni staff are hopefully able to extinguish between the two.

Hopefully Geni developers will make a change to make these differences easier to understand, and hopefully, in my view, the Geni developers will make the naming fields more like common family history software, which would make less confusion.

We just have to wait and see what happens.

LOL Jadranda but there are people on Geni who go around changing ALL women's names to their husband's name, regardless of culture and era, and knowing who knows what about the profile they are changing. I think we've been educating some of those people but new users join every day who believe that all woman are called "Mrs." and take their husband's surname.

Maybe there is a simple solution "right under our nose"?
well, it's not *so* simple, but with some help from Geni - we can make a big change- a field that indicates the type of "cultural naming convention" will aliow writing the "birth name" and the "married name" in two field that will be named (for display only) by the cultural convention - and let both camps (as Hatte wrote) to live in peace togather.

Yaacov

I like the way you're thinking. First we would have to specify the 'cultural naming conventions,' yes?

Do you know about this project?

http://www.geni.com/projects/Coalition-for-the-Standardization-of-G...