Many people might think that the name that a person goes by should be an easy item to standardize. In fact, it can be quite complex
The person’s name should be their birth name.
This should be easy for most men and not necessarily quite so easy for women in the English language. It is important that a woman’s maiden name always be used, but quite often a woman’s maiden name is not so easy to determine.
Let me address men first. When I give a man’s birth name, I try to determine all of the given names the man might have been given. I will include initials if that is all that I am able to prove. (Whenever, I use an initial, I always will put a period after it as some people, for instance President Truman, only had an initial for middle name. That should not have a period.)
Sometime a person will be seen in an official record with a different given name. I will add that as an alias (or AKA). I will make sure I have a transcription of the record that documents that alternate name.
It is not unheard of for a man (or woman) to legally change their name. In general, I will add that name as an AKA also. However, I will also add a Custom Event “Name Change” to the person’s profile so I can document when and where and why the name was changed. I have often added a transcription of any newspaper article that discusses this. (In England, Name Changes by Deed Poll will be often published in the London Gazette.)
Adoptions can present a special case of Name Change. If a person was adopted early in their life, I will use their adopted name as their birth name. Then their birth name, if we can learn it, would become and alias. I will also include a Name Change event to document that the name was changed due to adoption.
Nicknames are commonly added as Alias names. I do not like that system as I want them to display prominently as part of a person’s name. So I add the nickname(s) to the given name field in the genealogy program after all of the birth given names; eg. John Thomas “Jack” Lewis; or John Thomas “Tommy” Lewis. Yes, I will add obvious nicknames like Ronald “Ron” Lewis. Sometimes adding these will create a search hit when the formal name does not.
Like a nickname, some people will flip their given names in some records; eg, John Thomas Lewis might in some records be seen as Thomas J (or John) Lewis. Quite frankly, I do not have a good way to record it, especially if that becomes the dominant name for the person in later year records. I do not see it as an alias or as a a name change. I suspect often it was a change made early after the child’s birth was registered or when baptized.
A more troubling situation is when the person decides to go by their middle name as almost their nickname. You could write John Thomas “Thomas” Lewis by that reads poorly. Many German genealogies have a standard where the name a person goes by is underlined. This seems necessary in Germany because in Germany, the first given name is often a saint name; eg, Johan Ludwig Fredrich Hesse. Unfortunately, such a system is not implemented in all standard genealogy programs. This again becomes a situation for which no easy solution exists.
Let me now address name prefixes – sometimes called titles. I will in general write out the full title, be in Reverend, Doctor, Major, etc. I believe it is quite important to include the title for every person who has earned or been awarded a title. If they have multiple titles, I will include all of them, likely separated by a comma. I will only include the highest military rand a person has been awarded, of course. In the details of their life, I may include when they achieved each rank as it often helps to sort out which Major Lewis I am looking at in 1842. I do have one nuance to the above rule. The title Captain is reserved as a military title. If the man were known as a sea captain, I will give them the title Capt. to distinguish their circumstances.
I will use the suffix field for Sr., Jr., III as appropriate and often for degrees such as M.D., Ph.D, M.A., D.C., etc. If I have two (or more) suffix attributes I will add all of them separated by commas or semicolons as seems appropriate. Some peerage titles often better fit in the suffix field, eg, 6th Baron Paul of Bourbon Street.
I have a special use of the suffix field when working with DNA families in a one name study. When a man has been tested in for a YDNA test and has been assigned a biological family, I will include in the suffix the details of what biological family; eg, Hall YDNA family 006. With my genealogy program, I am able to include private notes in name fields. I will add as a private note the Kit number for the person; eg, Hall YDNA Family 024 [[Kit # 32467]]. That private information will never be published, but it will aid me in locating the person at the FTDNA website.
I have another trick that I use when I have a number of lines, usually by DNA, that I cannot connect but know do connect. That is to create a placeholder family that I connect all of the “stray” lines to. That enables me to find the lines when looking through a new record set that might further identify them.
Another name situation that needs to be addressed is the fact that many people have, in addition to their local name, one or more names based on their age or national/cultural origin. I have done much research among the Cape Breton Scot community. These Scots all have both an English Name and a Gaelic name. (I have one genealogy that is partially written in Gaelic. Currently, I will add the Gaelic name as an alias, but I have a wish that some application would allow me to identify the name as a Gaelic alternative so that I could prepare reports, charts, Gedcoms, with the Gaelic names as the main name. Among the Jewish communities, the tradition is that everyone has an English name and a Hebrew name. When Johan Ludwig Fredrich Hesse came to America, he would have likely gone by Louis Frederick Hesse when dealing with Americans but in his own community and churches he would have gone back to his German name; in fact, he would often give his children Germans names and English names. Catholics would often have additionally a Latin name. Native Americans would have different tribal names at different times in their life along with an English name.
A growing trend to frustrate genealogists is for married couples to both change their names after a marriage. As we will talk about with women, married names should never be used for a person’s birth name. However, some means is necessary to document married names. The Name Change event is likely the best way to do this for men.
Women will present almost all of the issues that I have discussed for men. The biggest change is that genealogy programs know that the convention is for women to change their name when they marry in most traditional English speaking country marriages. This is not as true in Scotland which has a stronger tradition of women keeping their birth names after marriage (even if census enumerators seem to ignore it…). This retention of birth name after marriage or the creation of a new surname after marriage is becoming more common. In part for many women, they had a career with their maiden name and need to retain that name professionally after marriage.
Unknown Names
In too many cases, a person’s given name or surname is not known. How that is documented is a challenge for many. The use of “Unknown”, “Unk”, “?”, “NK” are common. As is just leaving the surname blank, And all come with some degree of problem. (There was a tongue in cheek article written about the Unk family.) About 25 years ago, a specific string was created to be used for unknown surnames: [–?–] This has the advantage that it will never be confused in any known language as a real surname and it will sort to the top of any sorted surname list. It has been recommended by several genealogical societies. It is what I use consistently.
I also developed a standard for unknown given names. If I do not know a father’s or a husband’s given name, he will become “Mister”. If I do not know a mother’s or a wife’s given name, she will become “Miss”. If a I do not know a son’s given name he will become “Son”; a daughter would be “Daughter”; if I know neither the name nor the gender, it will become “Child”. If I know the child died very young, I will use “Infant”. The use of these given name will give me, and hopefully the reader (assuming they read English), some indication of Gender and “age” and status which is useful when additional records are discovered that will often better document a family.
Again, these name standards are ones that I have found serve me well.
While I say this, I know that some genealogy software make use of [–?–] impossible. In those cases I have been known to use a blank field.
Spouseless Relationships.
Virtually all genealogy programs allow a use to create a relationship between a single parent and child. My personal standard is that there is only one valid spouseless relationship. In all other cases, a placeholder spouse is advised. When I see a record that Joe Smith was the father of John Smith, I will add Miss [–?–] as John’s wife. It would be a placeholder until I was able to discover her real name.
If Thomas Lewis was the baseborn son of Elizabeth Lewis, I will add Mister [–?–] as the father. With my genealogy program, I am able to make Mister [–?–] invisible so that he does not display on reports not export in a Gedcom, but I always have him as a reminder of someone who needs to be identified.
The single case where a spouseless relationship is valid is when a single parent adopts a child. The child would have two biological parents, even if not identified and only the single adoptive parent at the time of the adoption.
You may see that this standard, is like many of my standards designed both to provide genealogy software something that should always be interpreted the same way and which would make a different display between a true single parent situation and an unknown parent situation.
