Names are very complicated things.
I've been following the threads about how to deal with missing
names and will shortly add my two cents to this thread, but wanted
to start a new thread, because I think the current discussion is
only part of a bigger picture. It wasn't too long ago we had a
thread dealing with the differences between farm names and
paternal naming conventions in scandanvian countries. The
French Canadians and others use dit names.
One of the things I REALLY LIKE about legacy is the fact
that a person's name is divided up into pieces so it has
title prefix and postfix as well as Given Name and Surname.
However, I'm convinced that more is needed. It would
be nice to have yet another field for names in which nick
names and/or farm names and/or paternal names could
be put. The GEDCOM standard does allow for at least
one maybe two more name pieces. I think I'd also like
one or two flags attached to the name structure. One for
Given name unknown and another for Surname unknown.
That however is NOT GEDCOM compatible. (sigh!)
You can't have everything!
Also, on the alternate names there should be a "mode"
field indicating what kind of alternate name it is. That
is one could have various options here such as nickname,
stage name, maiden name, farm name, name before
emmigrating, name after emmigrating. There could be
more. Yeah, this creates issues with swapping an alternate
name with the "main" name. But there are solutions, I
believe, would take more space and I've already gone longer
than I planed to go.
I'm more concerned that whatever the software does,
it does completely and well. So to me, improving and
expanding the way Legacy handles names is more
important than IGI searches, and Geo databases etc.
Some will think I'm obsessing over names and perhaps
I am, but that's how I feel.
Now back in my FTM days (and I too still have names
like this in my Legacy file) I solved the problem of missing
surnames. Like this.
Sally [__(Smith)___________]
So, Sally got a bunch of underscores added so that on
reports it would be seen that that part of her name was
missing. But then I had a lot of people with those
underscores in square breackets. So to keep them
straight I added the name of their Father or Husband
so that I'd at least know even in an index which line
that "blank name person" belonged to.
jr
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