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Jim M.

Date surety for Name-Var tag

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When adding the data for a new Person, the "Date" surety is permitted for the Name-Var. (I'm speaking of the pop-up that allows you to add a primary Name-Var, Birth, Death (and Marriage for a Wife/Husband) for a new person, all with sureties for a single Source citation.)

 

What value is there for a Date surety in this case that a Birth tag wouldn't give you? Does this figure into any of the reports?

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The date field, and thus date surety, really makes no sense for the primary name tag, and I never enter either.

 

The date field for a name tag is supposed to indicate when that name was adopted by the person. Generally there is no such known date. But occasionally there is, for example when a name is changed by immigration, legal process, or the like. Only then would I enter a date, and a surety, in a name tag.

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The date field, and thus date surety, really makes no sense for the primary name tag, and I never enter either.

 

The date field for a name tag is supposed to indicate when that name was adopted by the person. Generally there is no such known date. But occasionally there is, for example when a name is changed by immigration, legal process, or the like. Only then would I enter a date, and a surety, in a name tag.

Does it make sense to enter a surety for the primary (12DPM) - for any of the Name tags?

 

Ex: Name-Var, Name-Marr, Name-Nick, Name-Baptm, Name-Chg

 

Doesn't the association with the Person (i.e. because the tag exists at all) more than just imply the TMG user's intent to mean that "this is this person in this context"?

 

If you're (1) an expert or (2) a purist or (3) just damn manic about data consistency - what do you do with this surety value, and why?

 

How does your choice impact anything else TMG-wise?

Edited by Jim M.

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Does it make sense to enter a surety for the primary (12DPM) - for any of the Name tags?

Doesn't the association with the Person (i.e. because the tag exists at all) more than just imply the TMG user's intent to mean that "this is this person in this context"?

My approach, and I have no idea if it's mentioned in any "official" TMG documentation, is to use a slightly different meaning for the surities in name tags.

 

For most tags, the surety assigned in the 1 and 2 slots are, as you suggest, taken to mean your evaluation of the confidence you have that the record found applies to this person.

 

But for name tags, I twist it a bit to record my confidence that the person actually used the name found. That is, that this is a real name, and not one some scribe heard wrong or confused with someone else, and that the person spelled it as recorded (assuming that spelling was actually an issue for the person - apparently it wasn't for many a couple of hundred years ago.)

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I like your approach, Terry.

 

The Primary Name surety is just like any other Name tag surety, which is just like any other tag. Is the data entered correct? If there is a date, is it correct? (Just like in any tag, leave surety fields blank when they don't apply.)

 

One of my projects is a large set of royals and nobles. Many of these people have several name tags, usually associated with titles. I used to always make the primary name tag the complete name at birth. However, I've recently (and unwillingly) convinced myself that it really is necessary in many cases to add an arbitrary Primary Name tag that indicates the name and style that the person was known as--for men anyway--with a few exceptions. I won't go into details, but this often involves duplicating a name tag which has a date associated with it, and then using the duplicated name tag as Primary. In such cases, there is a date and a surety.

 

To use a non-royal example, let's say that you have a medical doctor in your family. Do you include "Dr" or "MD" in the primary name tag? S/he wasn't a doctor the day of birth: s/he acquired it at some date. Perhaps the doctor used a nickname, e.g., Dr. Red Duke.

 

It can get complex and there's no right or wrong answer, except that surety should apply to whatever data you have.

Edited by laura1814

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