Don, One of the your other respondents said "whatever floats your boat". I both agree with this sentiment and disagree with such a practice.
An important element in treating unknown names is that you are consistent within your own data. I have seen trees where the user used ?, Unknown, Unk, Lnu all within same tree. As I shared in a previous message, I invented [--?--] as my unknown surname almost 20 years ago. I created it to have a consistent unknown surname in my data. I wished it to distinctive enough so that it would stand out in a report as being obviously a placeholder for some unknown (or unknowable or non-existent) surname. I also wished all people with such a surname to sort together at either the top or bottom of the Name List or Index View. I did not wish to use a word like "Unknown" or "Unk" or "Lnu" or "NN" so there could never be confusion about those words being a real surname. And ? or ??? just visually did not work for me. I began using this and posted some trees using this option in the mid 1990s and then mentioned it in a few RootsWeb posts. About 5 years later, an article was written somewhere analyzing what people were using in the RootsWeb WorldConnect database for unknown surnames and to my surprise the author mentioned that my invention was in the top 5 in use there and that in her opinion, it was technically one of the best choices. That was 10 years ago, and I am slowly seeing other researchers publish articles using [--?--]. It is not a standard, and I doubt that it would ever be, but it is my standard. Further, I set a few other standards for recording data. One was that I would never record a spouseless relationship. All children have to have a Mommy and Daddy, even if Daddy is some anonymous (for now :) ) sperm donor. I decided that I would always create an individual with an unknown name to fill in that position. --> A corollary reason I did this was in part I did not like how Gedcom imports and exports by some vendors treated these relationship and that in some cases the genealogy got screwed up. Making sure that you always have a person in that missing slot eliminates that possibility of error. I also set a personal standard that all people would have a given name and a surname. Gedcom again motivated this. Just last week I received a Gedcom from a person in New Zealand from a family file created with Family Tree Maker. Two wives were only entered with their first names. When the Gedcom was imported into Legacy, those first names became surnames. The fault lay in the way FTM exported the Gedcom. However, I first saw this type of problem in the 1990s so this is not a new problem, but, if a user is not careful, they could be perpetuating errors. Again, to minimize risk of errors, I established my own standard that all individuals would have a given name and a surname. I have already described the unknown surname as [--?--]. What I did with an unknown given name is best described as a desire to impart as much data in the unknown given name. I could just continue to use [--?--] (as some folks do), but then a viewer seeing the [--?--] would not automatically know it was a surname. I established these standards: First, if I knew the gender of the individual, the unknown given name should reflect that gender. Second, if the given name was unknown but the person was a child of a couple, the name would reflect being a child; if the unknown name was because of a marriage, it would better reflect that. So, I use "Mister" and "Miss" for unknown given names for marriage partners and "Son" and "Daughter" for children. If the child's gender is not documented, I will use "Child" or "Infant", the latter when I have reasonable evidence the child was stillborn or died very young. Legacy 8, in its great wisdom, created a tool so that when a user has such standards, the PP Alert flag will be able to ignore them. In your My Documents/_AppData folder, you can add a text file called UnknownName.txt. In this you can document what you are using for such unknown names. (See the Help pages on PP Alerts to see how to construct such a file). This is what mine looks like: Miss Mister Daughter Son Child Infant [--?--] OK? john. At 01:23 PM 3/27/2015, Don Quigley wrote: >Some of the recent messages have prompted this >more general question I have about how to enter >names for unknown persons in Legacy, >particularly for persons with no known given or >surname. This situation typically arises for a >female with no known surname, for whom I have >information about her parents that I want to >record and have in the database when (if) I find >the missing names. I also need parents for >siblings to be linked, even if their surnames are unknown. > >I have always used ??? as the unknown given >and/or surname for a person. Legacy warns me >against doing so, but allows me to do >it. However, if I leave both fields blank, >Legacy will prevent me from saving the person. > >For me, ??? seems to work well, but Ive often >wondered why does Legacy (and other geneaology >sources) warn against the use of a questionmark >in a name? Are they just referring to the >practice of trying to show uncertainty about a >name i.e., John Smith?. I dont do that. > >Donald Quigley >Escondido, CA >Quigley Doyle Family Tree >http://www.donquigley.net > > > >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://support.legacyfamilytree.com >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 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://support.legacyfamilytree.com Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). 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