I do a slight modification to the below. I use:
[---?--] unknown first name (given name)
[~--?--] unknown last name (surname)
These are usually followed with [[child of xxx]] or [[wife of xxx]] For
example:
[---?--][[child of Uriah Patton]]
Adding the info in double brackets allows me to know "where this person
came from" when I'm looking at the index and such, but it treats it as
"private" info and does not print (normally) in reports/charts. Of
course I can add more info here,such as:
[---?--][[male child of Uriah Patton]]
[~--?--][[son 2 of Pat ??? & Jennifer Taylor]]
[---?--][[spouse & divorcee of Debbie Long]]
or whatever I want.
So I have the info I want/need, but it does not clutter up reports/charts.
And, yes, I do have some people where I don't know EITHER name, so they
have this in the first name field:
[---?--][[child 1 of Loretta Long]]
And this in the last name field:
[~--?--][[child 1 of Loretta Long]]
Kind of redundant at first glance, and extra typing, but I've found
various different situations (which I don't remember now) where having
it in both fields was very helpful - such as if I'm looking at a list
that only includes last names or something that only includes first names.
I use the tilde (~) in last name field just so the first name and last
name indicators are slightly different so I don't get confused about
which name is missing. I thought about using
[uln---?---]
[ufn---?---]
for unknown last name and unknown first name - but I just did not like
the looks of that.
On a slightly related note - I'm not heavy into Genealogy, wish I had
more time. But since I'm not in it on a regular basis I often get
"given name" and "surname" confused/reversed in my old feeble mind.
Does anyone else have this problem? Anyone have a good "hint" that I
can use to remember that "surname" = "last name" and "given name" =
"first name"?
Is there a way to "tweak" Legacy so it displays field name descriptors
such as: Given(first) and Surname(last)
Bob
On 03/27/2015 15:59, John B. Lisle wrote:
> 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 IÂ’ve 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 don’t do that.
>>
>> Donald Quigley
>> Escondido, CA
>> Quigley Doyle Family Tree
>> http://www.donquigley.net
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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