We can agree to disagree about your unknown name naming conventions, but I did wish to respond to some of your date usage.
As both of us maintain somewhat public research sites online, I decided some time ago that I did not wish to publish dates that I could not support by some type of fact. Yet, as a One Namer, I would find that my family files would have actually 100s of people with more or less the same name.
I discovered that Legacy has a neat feature that allows you to make a date private. For instance when I enter a marriage record for John Stedman and Mary Smith that took place in May 1816 and have not (yet) discovered them in a census or in other vital records documentation, I will estimate when they were born. For John, say 1790. I enter in Legacy [[est 1790]] {I tie "est" to the circa date in Legacy}. The privacy brackets around the date mean that index view and name list will sort the person correctly, but when I export the Gedcom, no date will appear for the birth date.
I have seen too many cases of people (myself included before I set this standard) having a date like you have of bef. 1882 copied down as 1882 and then get perpetuated. Now, I try not to be responsible for introducing too much bogus information into the literature.
When you enter a private date that would otherwise trigger the person as being deceased, the person is set to deceased.
This triggers another rant... :-)
I hate to see trees where persons born 400 years ago are listed as living and thus made private. This is often caused by some genealogy program or another not having a data model that properly handles when an undated person is deceased. Consequently, I set a personal standard that anyone whom I believe to be deceased, I will enter the death date of "Unknown". Then I do not have to depend on the whim of any genealogy program to set the person as deceased.
I have also found that when recording census data, it is helpful, even when I do not have a death date, to record a death date as "after 1860" if the 1860 census was last that I found him or her recorded. I will also make that a between date if, say, I find the person is the 1860 census but I learn in the 1880 or 1900 census or some other record that the person is deceased: "bet. 1860 and 1880".
I do know this standard sets up the possibility of someone recording the after date as just a date. I am likely to make that a private date as a result. My concern then is that the deceased person does not show a death date ...
Since I do not permit Gedcoms to be downloaded from my TNG site, I am not as not as worried about this. But it is a concern.
john.
At 03:29 PM 3/27/2015, Jay Wilpolt wrote:
Don,
I cant answer the question as to why Legacy does the things it does as far as name conventions.....
But I have a large database of almost 250,000.
The problems come most often because of exchanging gedcoms where importing and exporting data doesnt always end up in the right place causing errors.
Wherever I can I place a name and a date to help define the person
I use UnknownMÂ and UnknownF for given names and Unknown as a surname
You can tell Legacy to exclude specific names on the potential problems list.
I also add in usually some kind of date definer.
Say as you mentioned as married females parents and siblings.....
Let say the lady was born in 1900 and married in 1918.
I would add her parents as UnknownM Unknown born Bef 1882 and married Bef 1900 to UnknownF Unknown also born Bef 1882
and under the parents add the siblings like Margaret Unknown born 1915 and John Unknown born 1918
If you were to leave the default Legacy of just no names but a defacto (unknown and unknown) couple that connected to the Margaret and John siblings... because there are no dates for the parents they would export in any gedcom as LIVING persons.
With dates added Legacy has a better chance on not selecting them when searching for duplicates (If I didnt have all these (placeholders) my duplicate search would have over 1,000,000 potentials to review....lol)
so my general rules of thumb for date estimations are;
abt. (about) is used whenever the date is NOT exact OR complete; Dec 2008 is listed as "abt. Dec 2008"
aft. (after) is used for birth dates and estimates the birth took place after the marriage of the parents.
aft. (after) used in birth dates estimates the birth took place after the parent was 18 years of age.
aft. (after) used in marriage dates estimates the couple were married after the eldest spouse was at least 18 years of age.
bef. (before) used in marriages dates estimates a couple were married before the date of birth of any children.
bef. (before) used in death dates estimates a person died before the age of 100.
bet. (between) used in birth dates estimates a person was born between a range of dates when they are not listed on a census and are listed on the next census.
bet. (between) used in marriage dates estimates a range of dates from aft 18 years of age of the eldest spouse to some other date information from another source.
cir. (circa) used in birth dates estimates a spouses birth date is close to the same year as their spouse and is used only when no other estimated dates can be determined.
Yes, there will be people you find that actual date falls outside of these generalizations, (like the 3/10ths of 1 % of persons that live to be over 100 in my datafile) that is an acceptable range for error.
Hope this helps
Jay
On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Don Quigley <[email protected]> wrote:
- Some of the recent messages have prompted this more general question I have about how to enter ânamesâ 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.
- Â
- 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.
- Â
- For me, ??? seems to work well, but Iâve 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 donât do that.<
- Â
- Donald Quigley
- Escondido, CA
- Quigley Doyle Family Tree
- http://www.donquigley.net
- Â
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