On 11/07/2011 03:33, Robert E. Carneal wrote: > I swore this would never happen. I finally found some ancestors for > whom have more than one AKA or more than one Nickname. How best to > handle that in the name fields? Just pick the one I think was his/her > most used AKA and run with that? I surely can't do this: > > Robert "Robby" "Bobby" "Bob" "Rob" "Gene" Eugene > > For the first name field. Reports would not interpret that correctly. > Just choose one, say "Bobby" and run with that? So that it looks like: > > Robert "Bobby" > > in the first name field? And that way, "Bobby" would get used in > reports. And put the other AKAs/Nicknames in the AKA field instead. > Would that be the best approach? > I use AKAs a little differently to what many people (including Geoff, I note from his webinars!) do. I only create an AKA where it is obvious that someone actually took and used an alternate name. Examples of this would be Reginald Dwight, AKA Elton Hercules John, my daughter who decided to use her step-father's surname about a year after my second marriage, a person on my tree who started using a different surname at about the age of 21 for a reason I have not determined.
What I don't do is use AKA for alternative spellings or occasional nicknames as found, for example, in Censuses and other documents. When entering the Event and the Citation I do spell the name exactly as given in the document but if it is just a one-off spelling variant I do not consider it to be an AKA. Then there are nicknames or "quoted names". I would enter Robert "Bobby" if I knew, or it was obvious, that that was his preferred nickname and was in common usage: not so much "also known as" as "usually known as." If any nickname only cropped up a couple of times I probably wouldn't use it as a quoted name, simply record it as it occurred. In your case I think I might create a Nickname Event/Fact to formally record all the variants of his name that seemed to have been used. I would only pick one as the quoted name if I was sure it was the one that he was generally known by. -- Jenny M Benson Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
