Consensus on using Maiden Names

How do we handle adoptions where the birth mother's name is known but was never used by the child? What name to use, birth or adopted?

Personally I would use the legal name with any other names noted in the "nickname" field and in the "about me."

I like to see the maiden name in the maiden name field, and the legal last name at time of death in the last name field. Some say if "Mary" marries "John Smith" her profile is difficult to find among the many Mary Smiths if her last name is used. May I add, the opposite is true, too- if her maiden name is Smith, it's much easier to find "Mary" if her last name is also used. And it sure makes it easier to ID someone for a merge to see both names.
As for men having maiden names on profiles- I've never known the reason why some like to put the man's last name in the maiden name field. I see no need, or even the correctness of it. I will say, I have used the maiden name field for a man if there's an alternate spelling for the last name, and I wanted a place to show it.
You realize, we'll never reach agreement. And what about all the profile managers who don't follow the discussion, and continue to do their own thing, even if a standard is decided upon?

I am very much in agreement with you and I'm going to stop stuffing multiple last names for the many married into the Last Name field. For women, Maiden name and Legal name at death is what is needed, realistic, follows American law and customs, and is accurate and searchable.

Luckily as curators we can set the pace, Tammy. And we have the "naming conventions" on the Geni Community Wiki (link at the bottom of every Geni page) to point new users to.

Everyone needs to fill it in for the time and place they are familiar with -- which means, I wouldn't touch The Netherlands, for instance.

I expect us to verify findings with what *legal* entities say, *not* genealogists -- because we are documenting with *legal* records. For the US, that's the Social Security Administration, now and in the past.

Janice I agree with you according any true gen.and I know a couple or more. Maiden names should be used. They've been doing that way for years and years and years. Why fix something that ain't broke. The only one who seems to be confused, Erica, is Geni it's self and that's probably because it's computerized. And Geni seems to do things it's own way or no way at all. By the way should I be say Geni , is doing thing's it's was, her way , or his way?

Right on , Fay!

Judith,

You do realize the way you do it also the way Geni does it? Maiden name for women in the maiden name field, just like you said.

For someone living like you are :) I think you get to choose what last name you display in the program. For researching the past, though, we need both: maiden name and name at death.

Dont forget that the US Census only has been in existence since 1780 (and from 1790 thro 1870 was managed by the federal juciciary, not the executive branch. Begnning only in 1850, all members of a household were named in the cencus; previously only the head of a household was NAMED, while others in the household were merely COUNTED.

So CENSUS data has its flaws and, if you intend on going back to the 1600''s or before...the census was not in existence on the federal level.

I think the first US Census was 1790.

And you are quite correct -- it was a count for taxation purposes.

The best records I've found for early Americans are in wills, land records and on tombstones. Is that your experience?

Town histories, obits in papers, tombstones (where most of the time the birth name...at least on older headstones, is the wife's designation...unless you are referring to the times that no name is given but either wife of or 'relic' of is written)....histories of places and events , at least in my research give woman;s birth name or first name only, dau of...).

Wills usually say, my wife or beloved wife and first name only and treat in-laws as closer ralated than they are...my son can also mean son-in-law etc..

Town histories that I have seen almost always start as..., say 1735 but recite data that is older in a short version...usually back to the 1st to arrive in America.....and beyond...

The reason I said 1780 is that I'm LOOKING at an 1860 census that says it was the eith dcennial census and, since they were done every 10 years, I figured backwards...

OOPS, forgot there was a SPECIAL census in 1837 (I believe)...which would make YOU correct.

Judith,

I meant being a living person. You're "in charge" of how you are displayed in Geni.

That's very strange way to put it. You made me sound, and I know you could not have meant it that way, but nevertheless it didn't sound to good. Thanks for clarifying that. I was wondering for a moment what kind of a life I was living tat was so odd. I get up , go to work to make ends meet and go to bed like most everyone else in the world. I was worried there for a while. One of those statement like poeple like you. or you people. You know how people get upset over that one even if it's not meant they way they are taking it.

Wow thank you all for the great input. I was looking at things from my French Canadian Catholic roots where all church records are maintained according to maiden name. Was also confused about what to do with all the names when women were married 2 or more times.

Okay so since I am living and am in charge of my name what about all my dead family members, mothr , aunts , grandmother ete? Don't they have any rights like being sure their name is as it should be. The way they may have wanted it to be listed.

J A
I just went through hours trying to untangle multiple wrong merges of people with same names. 5 Richards xxxxx with wife Ann were merged together (some of them with same parents names), all born within 50 years, same names for children etc...This type of error is the bigest problem at the moment.

I do not honestly care which surname women choses to use (I for one have never used my husbands surname, just the one I was born with) -

We are talking about two completely different issues here.
What we (Erica, me and others) are trying to say is
PLEASE use any additional info you can, so we can avoid wrong merges, including putting the date in the name field, entering married name and every bit of additional information you possibly can have.
Once we have cleaned up the backlog of unprocessed duplicates we can get back to this, or simply just chose an option in settings to display maiden name.
I wish I could chose an option to display married name where there is none.

Thanks, Jadranka & Erika - I think it's worth repeating that merge errors are what we're trying to avoid and correct at the moment

(Although you all seem to think there will be an end in sight to that? I'm not so sure that is so - but it would be nice.)

Tammy's point adds to the numerous examples of the problems created by too little info - whethere only maiden or only married names.

Thankyou for the light relief, Erika, and JA - I'm still giggling about the way JA lives ;->

I'm not sure that the primary function of Geni is to create a record of legal info / or info for legal use; I think it is primarily aimed at creating a working doc of possible tree connections to be verified.

As many of my SA collaborators keep reminding me - download your GEDCOM if you want the data to be a permanent / static record. They all have private Gedcom trees that they use differently to the way they use Geni, where a split in the tree by a collaborator can easily wipe out your access to profiles you could view previously. Perhaps that is changing with the Main Profiles, and increased potential to protect the data accumulated on them by curators.

Finally, I think we should be careful not to speak as though we assume the American conventions are the only default option available. I'm not sure that Geni users are even primarily American, but I do notice the absence of other nationalities weighing in here to contribute to the conversation about what to do with 'maiden' names. Perhaps there is something telling in that?

We have covered historical period conventions in some detail on the Geni Community Wiki here:

http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions

The pages however need simplification, expansion, more user friendliness and movement into current countries.

We need to start a Project for that perhaps - what do you think?

I consult the Wiki all the time when working in the historical areas. Would be lost without it.

Judith,

You asked: "how would my ancestress want to have been depicted in Geni?"

That's a question I've asked myself.

My grandmother (the one with both an "original name" and a "maiden name") worked quite hard to get married and was a bit of a Southern Belle. She would have taken offense, I believe, at a record that did *not* show her married name. It would have been considered quite rude in fact to have called her anything but Mrs. (her married name).

Since in her case the Geni "defaults" match both the "legal" records and her personal preferences, all we have to do is use the data entry fields as labeled and we're good to go, how about that!

My other grandmother divorced and remarried so it's trickier. In fact based on this discussion I decided to simplify and go with, maiden name in maiden name field, name at death in last name field. Her children have her first husband's name but I show that in the "about me" text box and in the "nickname" field. It solves the problem, is quite searchable, shows great in tree view, etc. So again, using Geni the way it was designed ... wow, it works.

Fay, in searching for ancestresses I have usually found death records, including tombstones, with last name of (last) husband. So that is what I usually have.

That's a great page to refer to, Erica - thanks. Geni should add these resource sites to our home pages, don't you think? Far more useful than the box with the prompts for email addresses of relatives I know don't want to join.

Sharon Lee, I totally agree with your first paragraph- I, too, think it is primarily aimed at creating a working doc. of possible tree connections to be verified. There are too many sources with too many differences in dates and other info. We need to try to record data as accurately as we can and move on.

Here is what we (my collaborators and I ) have been using and it works
Name conventions
Make sure the name fields of the Master Profiles include
first name
Imore names put as many in the first name field, rather than 'middle name' option.. First names – we should create list of names that are the same, for example Ivka, Ivanica, Iva, Ivanka, Žuva, Giovana Stjepan, Stijepo, Stipe, Stipan Margarita, Mare Marija, Maria, Mare (be aware that Mare is usually Margarita rather than Maria) Josip, Joze, Jozo, Josko, Giuseppe, Josef Jacoba, Giacomma, Josipa, Bepina, Joza Vjekoslav, Luigi
Surname
should be written as they appear in Croatian (phonetic – with Croatian accents). If you have version of this surname from old church books written differently, it could be written under ‘nicknames’ or ‘about me’. Do not worry if you don’t have access to Croatian keyboard, one of the collaborators can fix it.
For people that have changed their surname during their lifetime (for example after migrating to English speaking country should be written as follows: Surname they were born, then slash ‘/’, then the surname they use now or they have died with For example: Joze/Joe Grubisic / Grubi Marko / Mark Sevelj / Sevegl Mara/Mary Pivac/Pivach
Number of families used to have 2 surnames to distinguish each clan in the family. If second family surname is known, it needs to be written For example: Marko Lozica Barbaresko is different from Marko Lozica Buzolic
Pero Tellini is the same as Petar Piantanida (sometimes Piantanide) so it should be written as Pero/Petar Piantanida/Piantanide Tellini
Maiden name
if known, otherwise ‘.’ or ‘?’
Display name
maiden name always in brackets For example Mara Sundic (.) or Mara Sundic (Nola)
If maiden name is same as married surname use display name for example Ana Vela(Vela)
(no space is important as sometimes Geni does not recognise that as two surnames)
Birth
if not known calculate approx 25-30 years from previous or next generation and enter it as circa – this is t avoid merging wrong people that might have same name and surname and parents with same names
Death
If we know that person died young but don’t know when ‘add picture ‘died young’
Places
Should refer to current Croatian borders, not what it used to be (no Yugoslavia, Austria, Austro-Hungary, Italy and so on). Historical accuracy in terms of what the country used to be called is a sensitive issue in Croatia, as the country was ruled by numerous rulers from other parts of the world. For example (place, island or region, country):
Lumbarda, Korčula, Croatia
Živogošće, Makarska, Croatia or
Živogošće, Dalmatia, Croatia

I think the Project mechanism works the best for "news." You can "follow" a project and you will get info in your newsfeed of new activity.

We think of the Wiki as the "back office" and the "project" as the "immediate action."

To me, we need a Project to update the Wiki Naming Conventions Pages and perhaps make some A/V aids (jpgs, youtube videos, animations) for more detailed application.

Should we name the Project "Geni Naming Conventions" ?

then maybe have that project as a default on profile page and keep it as simple as possible (something like 'Geni - simple guide') or something similar
I would like to avoid jargon (proper terminology), as this is something a new user is not familiar with

Not to muddle things more than they are but...(not related,) I know a woman who is a Jr.....Same name as her mother who is NOT a Sr....don't know why that was done but it is....so what's to be done in a situation like that....
Geni has no such provision for such an event in naming.
I KNOW that Geni is working on adoption (Eldon) but the question of names will take a bit of doing....the relationsip area of a profile allows for designating 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc marriages but I've found it is not used as much as it should be....would clarify a lot but still leaves the question of alternate spellings (don't forget that alot of people from 1800 back could NOT read or even sign their own names and the ones that recorded the info sometimes were not much better educated...schooling was primarily reserved for the more well-to-do,,,
In my own family there are mysterious middle names, seeming to have no basis or relationship to either mother or father that turn out to be the family name of a well-thought of uncle or aunt by marriage..that is the way that connections are sometimes made.

So I'm itching to see what the programmers come up with...I just hope that it is something that the TRUE USERS (US) will be able to use easily and include all that we need to get out of these muddles we get into....I know that everyone feels that a better system needs to be implimented....
Would also like to see provision for "don't know' that doesn't leave you with 482 tree matches like now

- Alternate spellings are easily covered in "nicknames" and in "about me."

- The "about me" text box is about to become searchable (geni is close to releasing this)

- Adoption / and what ifs are a big project for them programatically. We're just going to have to live with ***writing out the arguments*** in the text fields instead of getting the automated solution.

- I really believe that if users didn't do things like use Sir as a First Name because they don't see a Prefix or Title field the database wouldn't be the mess that it is. That's not geni's fault: that is called "user error."

- I challenge each and every one of us to simplify, clarify and teach "best practices" for data entry to our newer / less computer savvy users.

- I suggest that if we use the fields as labeled in English, the result will be a cleaner, more accurate and easier to merge tree.

Anyone care to put money on the wager? But it's up to *us* to educate in "best practices," not up to geni. They give us the tools to the best of their ability, and we use them to to the best of ours.

Alternate spellings will always be a problem. My wife has a g.g. grandfather with thirteen known variations of his last name. I decided to just go with the one the DAR used.

The Naming Conventions Project has been started:

http://www.geni.com/projects/discussions/Coalition-for-the-Standard...

I think we need to have both names
It is fine if the christian name is unusal but common names become a nightmare.