"UNKNOWN, Jane-Wife of John Doe".
I am doing something like this… I suggest that you keep the surname as the first entry in the line, even if it is the husband’s surname, it will make the indexing and searching so much easier and more efficient. Also, keep the wife’s first name as the first entry on the line and that will facilitate first name searches in the index. Such as: first name: “Jane [surname?]” surname: “Doe, John’s wife” Also, if you deal with different countries, consider using terms in their language will help reduce the “Unknowns” and sort the index by the families and locations that you will be working with at a given time. You can get the foreign terms off the Legacy report (go to “Report language” and just view the report) or from Babelfish online as well as the original sources. First name: “Johanna (Familienname?] Surname: “Halehr, Claus Ehefrau” Then you can use other terms to break down the Unknowns even further and their foreign equivalents: for instance in some cases it is not just that you do not know the name but there maybe people in your genealogy who never had a name. One example of this is stillborn children. For this I use again whatever language is appropriate which keeps them closer to their own family: “Stillborn”, “Totegeborn” Also, when you have gone back as far as you can you may find that if you are searching an old Churchbook that you can identify siblings but not a father for them. Rather than just enter “Unknown” (again!) I use, in the appropriate language: “Forefather”, “Vorfahren”, “Stamvader”. Breaking it up by location/language helps in two ways: It reduces the number of Unknowns and sorts them by location, which ends up sorting them by family. Since the tendency is to work on one location or family at a time it becomes easier to work with those unknowns because they are grouped with the appropriate families/locations and not thrown into a generic category with all the other unknowns. In my case, we are doing the genealogy together with members of the family in Germany and contacts in various parts of the world so using the language of the location makes correspondence and sharing (usually PDF over email) easier, particularly if there is a language difference. However, you can also do this within one country by sorting unknowns with such terms as: “Colonial” or “Midwest”, either by location or by time frame or even both. If the lines get long, you can even shorten “unknown” to UK. I don’t use underscores or dashed but I have used parentheses ( ) and [ ]. I dislike this, however, because it affects the index adversely. In order not to confuse that the last name belongs to the spouse and not to the individual, I will add a symbol after the first name>, this does not affect indexing since it does not occur at the beginning of either the personal or surname. I do the same thing with people who seem to be long to the family but I cannot show documention: Susan^, Jones. When I see the ^ I know that it is not a certain or proven placement. This helps me not to loose people that I need to remember, and it prevents having a ton of unlinked people that I can’t find the correct connections for, particularly when dealing with groups of people who are using the same first names over and over again. I am not sure how the use of these symbols affects making a gedcom. That is something to look into. Hope this is helpful! Carol _____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert57P via Gmail Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 6:49 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Unknown name [--?-- Have you tried using underscores rather than dashes? I don't know if that would make any difference, and they are not quite as easy to type, but might be worth a shot. To make it clearer in some screens/reports, I often put something like "UNKNOWN, Jane-Wife of John Doe". While this clarifies "who" the person is (or at least where they "belong"), it gets awfully wordy and I'm not totally happy with it. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: HYPERLINK "mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]"[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]"[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.com Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 7:57 AM Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Unknown name [--?-- The problem with using "Unknown" , "UNKNOWN", or some other variation thereof is one of language. To a non-English speaker it could be taken as a given and/or surname. Using [--?--] lessens the chance of such misunderstanding. -----Original Message----- From: Jenny M Benson <HYPERLINK "mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]"[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]"[EMAIL PROTECTED] e.com Sent: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 4:10 am Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Unknown name [--?--] To be honest, I don't understand why [---?---] alerts anyone to "unknowns" any more than "Unknown" or "UNKNOWN" does, which is what I use. However, if you don't want to use some version of "Unknown", why not use xxx... or XXX.... ? Just as identifiable as dashes and question marks and I very much doubt Legacy would suss that they are not valid names! -- Jenny M Benson Legacy User Group guidelines: HYPERLINK "http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Etiquette.asp"; \nhttp://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages: HYPERLINK "http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/"; \nhttp://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: HYPERLINK "http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Help.asp"; \nhttp://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: HYPERLINK "http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp"; \nhttp://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp _____ size=2 width="100%" align=center> Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free HYPERLINK "http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-us/index.htm?ncid=A OLAOF00020000000970" \nAOL Mail! 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