Consensus on using Maiden Names

Thank you Fay!!! I have stopped using Junior and Senior as well because it can get VERY UGLY (not aesthetically, but a big mess of errors).

There were times where "I" dead-ended at a tree where I had Jr. and Sr. Come to find out Sr. had a father and a grandfather with his same name. So, Jr. was really a 4th. There's no point in putting the Jr and Sr in when Genealogy is a continuous puzzle...and you may have a Sr or "the First", but your 26th cousin 3x removed has more information than you on your shared ancestor.

I know it is not actually kosher but I put birth year beside first name. It does not interfere if you call up David Johnson's i.e. and has been invaluable in figuring out WHICH William or WHICH Richard is in the right position.

My wish is that, when a tree is complete (that will be a red letter day) that the DATE crutches can be eliminated...but for now it helps ME....and at least is SOME consistent way to sort through the men's names...

William 1540 is father of William 1565 but NOT father of William 1882....etc...

As I said...it may not be politically correct but it works....and has been invaluable to me (with names being re-used, even within a single family...if 1 child died, they used the name again...and have found male who died at 2 years old with wives and families when another male with the same name, born later...is left wanting)..Why would someone name another child the same if the 1st one lived???

Anyway...that's what I do...

(I work 4 primary trees with so many like names that I sometimes cannot figure out what family someone is responding to...I have to go back to my message...unless the response gives me the answer as I sent it...William Brockway, William Copp, William Sargent, or William Badwin)...

If return info only says william married Mary Webster...it could be any William..at least with the years I have a shot...

That's it for now

I totally agree that it is easier to use maiden names only. Using married names becomes very confusing when a woman has had 2 or more husbands.

The fact that we're having this discussion at all tells me that something more is needed on the software side.

I am pretty strongly opposed to using fields for purposes that are clearly different than originally intended- especially when better technical solutions could be implemented. For example, I wish Geni provided a way to manually identify two profiles that are definitely known to be different people. The purpose would be to prevent those two profiles from ever being merged together [again] by accident.

In my opinion...
Changes to a person's last name (for whatever reason, including marriage) should be recorded in the Last Name field.
Birth (family) names belong in the Maiden Name field.
Nicknames belong in the nickname field.
The Display Name field does more harm than good.

Geni needs to display ALL of the fields needed to minimize the chance for confusion on every appropriate screen. In fact, I'd like to be able to see the PARENTS of any person when I hover my mouse over their name in the Merge Wizard- especially parents of the parents.

David,
Display name is the only thing I can use to mark a women whose both maiden and married surnames are the same (we have to rewert to tricks to make it display properly) can show you examples

As a leak ....

Geni is working on an enhancement of their public profiles "front page" that should help the cause.

Changes suggested or in the works are:

- "Nickname" field be renamed to "also known as" and put directly under the name. This should help the "multiple names" situation and make that field far more useful -- in profile view and in geni search.
- Families be grouped together and displayed in separate "modules"; i.e., parents and siblings; marriages and children (in date order).

We *all* need to make "naming conventions" clearer by country / language / historical period, including the country's LAWS (not genealogical conventions unfortunately), on the Geni Community Wiki. Otherwise how will people new to Geni ever get it right?

As an aside, if you are currently using Dates in the Name to help keep the generations straight, let curators know in the "Curator Assistance please... " discussion.

We can assist with this by making Master Profiles and floating curator notes. I try to put in brief family notes that 'float" at the top, and Master Profiles **cannot** be merged together.

Jandranka,

There are name display preferences to show both last name and maiden name. I'm curious if your examples would not fit that model?

simply - when maiden and married surname
are the same it does not cosider them as two
separate surnames

I never changed my name on marrying 25 years ago. The only time it was tricky was in schools where I was always referred to as Mrs N as both my daughters have my husband's surname. Something I never considered at the time but I have a really common surname which gives me anonymity (hundreds of women with my name on Facebook, Google etc) where as my husband's name is really unusual. Of course 25 years ago that wasn't an issue.

I have added husbands last names to several profiles. The change often brings merge issues, or in the case of over 100 potential merges, reduced them to 1 or 2. It seem to me that the issue is not so much a matter of personal usage as it is one of how other profiles are entered in Geni. After the merge issues are resolved the profile can be edited.

Maiden name has always been considered the standard in genealogy, at least the way I learned, and at least up until this century (21st, not 20th). If there are multiple marriages, attach the info as notes, including years to indicate 1st, 2nd etc. A certain "Mary Featherstone" is certainly going to be much easier to find than Mary Jones!

Janice,

This to me is the point of confusion and disagreement.

Geni has a database. Genealogical charts and reports are *extracted* from the database, but the database needs to be as completely filled out as possible.

It's really just a matter of display in the reporting views, but if the input form is not filled in, then it is erroneous.

What you choose to call yourself (or your American ancestress chose) is not congruent with what in fact was the law: set by the social security administration formally but codifying what was a centuries old de facto "English Common Law."

So again -- documented records (and we are trying to do documented record storage here) shows, on my ancestresses, in their married names after marriage. I include:

- wills
- tombstones
- probate records
- court records
- census reports
- licenses
- land patents
- children's birth records
- health records
- death certificates
- social security administration issued numbers

I'm sorry if it causes confusion in the visuals but that's about educating users to use a database, and to run a report separately.

Hope this helps.

It's a matter of whether you legally changed your name and how subsequent legal records refer to you, if you did. I'm from the generation where some changed their names and some did. Clearly, records of me are in my married name, so having my married name is crucial, in addition to the maiden name -- which of course is my father's name by the way, not so very feminist anyway! My best friend did not change her name and you will not find information for her informal or legal in her husband's name and if I were to record her in Geni, it would be only with her maiden name.

I woke up thinking of exactly this point, Hatte!

When you build a family tree, you work backwards. So in the US your first stop is checking the SSDI (the social security death index). That is your legal name according to the US Govt., and probably the name best used in the Last Name field in Geni. (I really *don't* like the workaround of stuffing multiple last names into that field gaaaah).

My mother, born 1925, was married 3 times and changed her name legally twice. So actually she is best reflected in Geni under her current and hopefully final last name -- her second husband, with whom there are no children.

But Geni-ites will just have to learn to read the "about me" and "also known as" fields for proof she's my mama. :)

Mimi,

If you haven't changed your name legally and it happens to be the same one you had on your birth certificate, *and* you got married so it's a "maiden name" as the word is used in English (NOT the same as "birth name" or "original name"), I would probably have your record as Maiden Name, Anderson, and repeat, Last Name, Anderson.

In other words, I only use Maiden Name when known and its a woman, and repeat it in the Last Name field when it is in fact the Legal Name

P.S. I've just invited some cousins to my tree. Now I have to remember -- who uses their maiden name, who uses their married name, who hyphenates .... Gaaahhh ...

One of the reasons I have added in the display name, multiple last names of husands along with maiden name, is to hopefully prevent bad merges... making it obvious who that woman has been attached to, clearly known to everyone who is thinking about merging without looking at notes, or info beyond what is obviously displayed.

Yes, Display Name is the field that really should solve the problem, Sally! Unfortunately it's not just working as it should, and that's a program fault within Geni. We have asked Geni for solutions but I'm sure that will take time to implement.

Meanwhile let's work with what we have.

- a core concept that the more information there is in a profile, the better off we *all* are

- the "nickname" field (hopefully soon relabeled to "also known as" and made more prominent) used for common aliases

- Use First Name, Middle Name, Maiden Name and Last Name fields are they are known in English

- However ... respect and use the naming conventions from other countries and languages. If people from Quebec tell me that the usual (not to mention legal) way to show a woman's name, for example, is Marie-Therese de Vallaincourt (hypenated First Name, *not* separated into First & Middle Names; "de Vallaincourt" as Last Name, not Middle and Last Name) and surname = maiden name, then that **of course** needs to be the way my ancestress in Quebec is written and displayed in Geni.

- Write it all out in the "about me" field. Don't rely on the "Geni connections."

Eldon,

In general I agree with you.

A lot of the legacy profiles in Geni are the result of different GEDCOM uploads from different programs using different naming conventions (including none at all).

Hopefully we are moving more solidly into the "documentation" phase of building the global tree, where we can better reflect realities, legalities, and original cited and sourced research in records instead of some file from somewhere sometime. :) :)

Erica,
I'm one of the guilty GEDCOM up-loaders. Found that out with the zombie problem -:( . As we get the merges done it will be easier to document profiles because there will be less profiles to document. I have found that merges work better if both the married and maiden fields are used. Of course that is a problem when you are working in a time where there were only first names. You cant have everything -:(

Yup! We have place names though and the medievalists are developing really good naming conventions. They are hampered by much vaguer dating.

I agree - merge up the dups, then document. We're reaching the documentation point already though, which is great news.

I agree with the point about the screen view you choose being a different issue to the info provided for Geni users to work and merge with.

As to informing ourselves on the regional and historical conventions: Here is my contribution: Legally, in SA, women may use their maiden name (Erica, won't you explain why this isn't a synonym for 'birth name'?), or any subsequent husband's name - whichever they choose. No name change application has to take place.
But, I believe there are a number of countries where women tend to use their husband's name in everyday life, but there is no actual change from their maiden / birth name in legal terms.

When inputting my own name - as it is my birth name, not my husband's name - I just left the last name field blank, having filled in the maiden name field. On my screen, this shows as Sharon (Doubell), which use of parenthesis alerts people to the fact that it is my original surname. It seemed the most useful way of indicating that, without duplicating fields, although I don't know whether it creates search problems on geni.

Long discourse on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_and_maiden_names

To me it's pretty obvious, though: "maiden" means a female virgin. Not something you refer to in men, nor in a marriage contract care about. Therefore, not synonymous with "birth" or "original" name. So trying to equate "maiden name" with "birth name" seems to me like a 20th century anachronism.

The way you use maiden name is good on display depends on your Geni view settings, I believe, so therefore can cause confusion to people who have their views set differently. I repeat my name in Maiden Name and Last Name fields as I've never changed it.

Oh, I see, Erica - you're making the point that the ungendered 'birth name' is a more encompassing term. Yes, it seems long overdue that Geni should have realised that faux pas - especially with the legalisation of same sex marriages.

J, I think the point is that other country's naming conventions mean that 'maiden' name is not understood at all. So, many of us keep finding male profiles with 'maiden names' - as the field is being understood as 'birth name.'

Yes, I suppose I should put my husband'/s' names in my last name field to be consisent with what I do elsewhere - but, for the moment, nobody is going to need to merge my profile, and your reason of records would argue for me needing to put both my husbands' surnames in - which Geni doesn't give me the option to do.

Frankly, merging would be aided even more if we added wives' birth names to their husbands' too - and then nobody would feel that any part of their identity was being left out, or used to overdefine them.

Of course, the entire system relies on nobody ever needing to add polyandrous marriages ;-)

Sharon, you are understanding me correctly.

I believe that non English speakers are misinterpreting the term "maiden name" and trying to use it for "birth name" or "original name." This is in fact incorrect for those of us with immigrant ancestors whose names were legally changed at immigration event (or in current times, for whatever reason!).

As mentioned, my grandmother has an original (or birth) last name and a different maiden name. I would like for others to be able to find her easily in the future. :) :)

I totally believe that there is no reason in the world to put husband's name in the last name field if it wasn't legally changed! The text field of "about me" would cover it ... and anyway, you're still around if anyone needs clarification on a merge situation.

Here's to more database fields --- and reporting options -- in the future. You do have to admit, the application is more fluid than most. It just needs to get better (and I believe it will: the enhancements out the door are at warp speed now).

Polyandrous marriages ...

Geneaology will get more confusing in the polyandrous era!

I have been quite annoyed at my female relatives social security death records having only their LAST married surname and not the maiden name at least in addition.

Census does sometimes give maiden name at least.

Not that I've seen. Census shows current household, not legal names.

Yes - more field options will take care of a lot of this.

Most logical of all would be to have the field for birth name as the default for both genders, with options - to appear in brackets - for the surname/s of either gender's spouse/s.

Multiple field options might take care of changes in spelling (Erica's granny) and track more than one spouse.

I suppose what needs to be thought through is that Geni is a whole new way of doing genealogical research - where everyone becomes a genealogist and the fluidity of 'merging' is, for the first time (?), one of the fundamental principles: But then it must take into account the 'lay' nature of most of its users - which means the potential for error is exponentially increased.
Perhaps this whole new way of 'doing' genealogy that Geni has pioneered calls for new thoughts on data entry in ways that decrease the possibility of merge errors.

And yes, let us be ready for the polyandrous era...;->

For some reason in the early U.S. census, I have seen maiden name for some of my immigrant female relatives, along with married name of course.