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Joop

patronymics

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Hi all,

 

In dutch naming before 1800 or so a lot of patronymics are used. Sometimes they kind of expand the given name and sometimes they are more or less a last name (which might appear later in another source). What is the best practice to handle them in TMG? I have now designated the Other name field as such, but am not sure how this will work out.

 

BTW I also have used the prefix of surname for the surname prefixes (used a lot in Holland). I am not sure what a sensible use of the prefix of given name is. I now designated it as a persons call name.

 

Any help is very much appreciated.

 

Regards, Joop

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Hi Virginia,

 

Thanks for pointing me to these threads. I've read them and noticed them all to be pre-TMG 7. This makes me wonder if the new (more flexible) fields in naming might help.

 

People in many of the threads seem to use the Suffix field, but I have seen nobody use the Other name field. Given that you can make up your own sort name variants, it would seem rather usable for the purpose of storing patronymics.

 

Another thing is that, from my point of view, naming (since history) is meant to uniquely identify a human being (or for that matter any object). In small, local societies it sufficed to use the name of a father, village, farm etc. and combine it with a "given name". If we want to store this information in a structured way (that is, without losing the context), we should - my opinion - use fields with a fixed meaning. TMG 7 is fairly flexible in that respect, hence my approach to define beforehand the exact meaning of a field and stick to it. In TMG one can always use extra name tags to cope with variations but a patronymic is not a variation, but part of a real name found in a source.

 

Sorry to be so elaborate about this, but in nearly all older records one finds the patronymic problem and Genealogy is about old records. So it seems that handling it right (what is that? :)) seems to deserve a fair amount of attention, especially in software packages that support storing genealogical data. Even a Master package like TMG hasn't addressed this item by name (but it has by flexibility). So the question to colleague genealogists is: how do we use this flexibility to structure the patronymic information found in older records?

 

Looking forward to your thoughts about this subject.

 

Regrads, Joop

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Hi Joop,

 

You have identified one of the reasons that TMG has the feature of Name Styles!! :D These allow you to assign labels to the name parts to be consistent in your data entry. Those users who do not wish to learn and use this feature make use of the Suffix field since that field is included in the "standard" Name Style and the OtherName field is not. I haven't reviewed all the links that Virginia gave you, but believe some of them make various proposals for a Name Style to use for patronymics. As for the "right" way to do this, what is right is what will cause you to be consistent in data entry, to be easy for you to search, and to ensure that your report output looks the way you want. The labels and data entry and NameStyle you choose will only be seen by someone looking at your data in TMG, and ususally that is nobody except yourself, which is why it only matters to you.

 

If you decide to use Name Styles, check GTMOTMG and Terry's Primer, as well as TMG Help. However, last time I tested (in version 6) the various Name Style fields each affected the following output and use:

 

Output -- Used in report output and in most displays where names are displayed as spoken, e.g., Person View, Family View, Tree View, Tag Entry screen, etc.

Surname sort -- Used to sort the Simple Picklist, Expanded Picklist, and Project Explorer (when sorted by Surname), and in indexes.

Surname display -- Used in the Picklist and Project Explorer (when sorted by Surname), to display parents and spouses in the Expanded Picklist, and used in indexes.

Given sort -- Used to sort the Simple Picklist, Expanded Picklist, and Project Explorer (when sorted by GivenName).

Given display -- Used in the Picklist and Project Explorer (when sorted by GivenName).

Children/Sibling display -- Used in the Children window and the Siblings window.

 

Just my thoughts for your consideration,

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Hi Joop,

 

You have identified one of the reasons that TMG has the feature of Name Styles!! :D These allow you to assign labels to the name parts to be consistent in your data entry. Those users who do not wish to learn and use this feature make use of the Suffix field since that field is included in the "standard" Name Style and the OtherName field is not. I haven't reviewed all the links that Virginia gave you, but believe some of them make various proposals for a Name Style to use for patronymics. As for the "right" way to do this, what is right is what will cause you to be consistent in data entry, to be easy for you to search, and to ensure that your report output looks the way you want. The labels and data entry and NameStyle you choose will only be seen by someone looking at your data in TMG, and ususally that is nobody except yourself, which is why it only matters to you.

 

If you decide to use Name Styles, check GTMOTMG and Terry's Primer, as well as TMG Help. However, last time I tested (in version 6) the various Name Style fields each affected the following output and use:

 

Output -- Used in report output and in most displays where names are displayed as spoken, e.g., Person View, Family View, Tree View, Tag Entry screen, etc.

Surname sort -- Used to sort the Simple Picklist, Expanded Picklist, and Project Explorer (when sorted by Surname), and in indexes.

Surname display -- Used in the Picklist and Project Explorer (when sorted by Surname), to display parents and spouses in the Expanded Picklist, and used in indexes.

Given sort -- Used to sort the Simple Picklist, Expanded Picklist, and Project Explorer (when sorted by GivenName).

Given display -- Used in the Picklist and Project Explorer (when sorted by GivenName).

Children/Sibling display -- Used in the Children window and the Siblings window.

 

Just my thoughts for your consideration,

 

Hi Michael,

 

You've been a great help. I am starting to understand now. Just use any style you want to make up and take care of the way it is printed.

The same is probably true for the places.

Talking about place names: I haven't found something like a Place name - var. In Holland that would be a very nice feature. Some place (the same) changed names over the years and it would be great to keep track of that. Did I overlook it?

 

Thanks a lot, Joop

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Hi Michael,

 

You've been a great help. I am starting to understand now. Just use any style you want to make up and take care of the way it is printed.

The same is probably true for the places.

Talking about place names: I haven't found something like a Place name - var. In Holland that would be a very nice feature. Some place (the same) changed names over the years and it would be great to keep track of that. Did I overlook it?

 

Thanks a lot, Joop

Glad my ideas were helpful. Yes, the same is true of places. As for places changing names, this has been discussed and is one of the reasons there is an optional date range to a date so TMG can remind you if you are using a place name inappropriate for the date of the event. As for linking to another place, you can add a Comment to the place as a reminder/aid to yourself of other names for this place. Those are the standard tools.

 

For some of my more complex places that are in lots of my data and changed names in a complicated way I have a more complex method. I create a "pseudo" person that is a location. A single location "person" can be used to link together multiple “place entries” in the Master Place List that actually referred to the same location by using multiple Name-Var tags with possible date ranges to reflect when the location was known by each name. Name indices would link all these locations to this one “person”. The primary name could be the Name-Var that is the “current” name, or could be a name identifying the latitude and longitude. A true event tag on a "real" person could have the actual name of the location as of the time of the event entered as a place from the Master Place List, but the location “person” could be linked as a witness, either using the actual Name-Var for that time or the “current” name with a possible witness sentence of “This location is currently named [W]”. If a larger area was identified by a single name for a period of time and then subdivided, the larger area “person” could be the “mother” of the multiple subdivided “daughters” who were created/born at the time of the subdivision.

 

This can be complex, and I only do this for a few locations, but this might give you ideas.

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