rniquette 0 Report post Posted November 21, 2019 Hello Everyone, I've just run into a bunch of Roman individuals and am in a bit of a fog when it comes data entry in TMG9. Here's an example of one of the names: Gaius Julius Caesar In Roman parlance, Gaius is the given name or praenomen. Julius is the gensnomen (family) name Caesar is the cognomen (physical trait, as in "Hairy" for Caesar. I can't make this up). The question is, how should a name like this be stored in TMG? It sounds like the name should be given: Gaius surname: Julius suffix: Caesar Putting "Caesar" in the name suffix would read well in the individual's page in TMG and reports, but it won't contribute much to any kind of sorting order. On the other hand, Gaius (given) Julius (surname) would be sorted by "Julius, Gaius". That's not exactly useful from a search perspective either. So I've though about using the "sort given" and "sort surname" fields this way: sortgiven: Gaius Julius sortsurname: Caesar Now this sort order would make searches a lot easier. The name would sort as "Caesar, Gaius Julius" Caesar as surname is not technically correct, however. But does this really matter? In a report with surname caps, the name would read: Gaius Julius CAESAR. That's not technically correct either. So I could turn off the surname caps, but then all the other surnames in the database would be reported in mixed case. I don't really want this. Whatever, those are the various things I've been considering when it comes to data entry of Roman names in TMG9. Anyone else run into a situation like this? How did you handle the name formats? Lastly: as it turns out, I picked a relatively easy example in Gaius Julius Caesar. What if there are more than three names, as is actually the case most of the time? Which name is which? Here's a example of a Roman who's actually in my database: Amnius Manius Caesonius Nicomachus Ancius Paulinis (Honorius?) How do these names get assigned to praenomen, gensnomen, cognomen? What goes where in the TMG9 in the given, surname, suffix, sort name fields? This guy's father and son don't give a clue - only their given names match, so where are the gensnomen (family) names? And what to do about the (Honorius?) suffix? Any ideas on how to store Roman names "like this" in TMG? Thanks for your time, Ron Niquette Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Michael Hannah 0 Report post Posted November 22, 2019 Hi Ron, There are many different ways to deal with this, including use of TMG Name Styles. Each will probably have advantages and disadvantages. You might find it useful to read the "Names" section of the Data Entry chapter of my on-line book: https://www.mjh-nm.net/DATENTRY.HTML#Names It discusses various customized ways to enter names in TMG. Hope this gives you ideas, Michael Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rniquette 0 Report post Posted November 22, 2019 (edited) 21 hours ago, Michael Hannah said: There are many different ways to deal with this, including use of TMG Name Styles. Each will probably have advantages and disadvantages. You might find it useful to read the "Names" section of the Data Entry chapter of my on-line book:https://www.mjh-nm.net/DATENTRY.HTML#Names It discusses various customized ways to enter names in TMG. Hope this gives you ideas, Michael Thank you Michael! Luckily I had already been storing the long Roman name combinations (as well as some of "The Lame" and "The Hairy" Frankish kings !!!) all in the given name field. So I used John Cardinal's TMG Utility to change all the blank and "?" surnames to the double exclusion chars, "--". This has had the effect of resolving all of the messy formatting problems I was having in some of the reports - to wit, by removing the glut of "?" wherever surnames were not known. In my long winded post I completely forgot to say that some of the formatting issues were occurring when I used John Cardinal's Second Site utility to generate my website. There were too many question marks in the name fields for the person web pages. Your advice to use the exclusion chars fixed that too. BTW Second Site also has an option to show/suppress excluded data. As you pointed out in your book, the single char exclusion flag "-" can be overridden by TMG and Second Site settings to turn the excluded data on or off. It's great to know that there are options for handling these things, but I think that for now, especially in the case of those Roman names, I'll be using the double exclusion char exclusively. Thanks again for the advice, and thanks for posting that how-to book. Since TMG development was ended, it's encouraging to see so many people like you and John Cardinal continuing to support the program. Keep up the good work! Have a good one, Alan Mintaka Edited November 22, 2019 by rniquette Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Terry Reigel 0 Report post Posted November 22, 2019 Alan, TMG Utility and Second Site are written by John Cardinal. Gene Stark wrote GED2HTML, a program to make a very basic website from a GEDCOM file. So far as I know he's never written anything specific to TMG. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rniquette 0 Report post Posted November 22, 2019 (edited) You're right, I got Gene Stark mixed up with John Cardinal. Mea Stupidity. Thanks for pointing out the gaffe. I'm going to edit that post to give John proper credit. Edited November 22, 2019 by rniquette Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
