Duplicate people

[Daryl Edmonds 0]

I seem to have a few people duplicated; not sure how it happened but I'm wondering how I can combine them. They are clones, ie. same name, data, ID number, everything is the same. If I update one, the other is also updated, remove one, they both go. Any ideas how it happened and how to overcome it, or will I just have to live with it? If I do a report the offending name(s) only appear once.

 

Cheers, Daryl.

[Jim Byram 0]

You don't have duplicate people. You apparently have people with more than one identical name. Look at the Person View of each person for a non-primary name in the Tag Box identical to the primary name in the Name Box.

[Daryl Edmonds 0]

You don't have duplicate people. You apparently have people with more than one identical name. Look at the Person View of each person for a non-primary name in the Tag Box identical to the primary name in the Name Box.

 

I know they're not duplicates as they have the same ID numbers and everything is identical and I know that, for that person, I only entered the data once. It may have happened when I had to do a re-install and full restore, recently. I've added a screen shot to show what I mean. The name comes up twice in both the Picklist and the Project Explorer.

[Paul Lawrence 0]

I know they're not duplicates as they have the same ID numbers and everything is identical and I know that, for that person, I only entered the data once. It may have happened when I had to do a re-install and full restore, recently. I've added a screen shot to show what I mean. The name comes up twice in both the Picklist and the Project Explorer.

 

Look at the Person View for that individual and you will see a name-var or some type of name tag listed in the tag list that has the same name as the primary name tag which is shown at the top of the Person View...

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

Here are screenshots of how it can happen, Daryl. Notice the Name-Var tag at the top of the Detail window in the first screenshot - and the resultant display in the Picklist in the second screenshot. Look for something like that in the Detail view of those people.

 

Virginia

 

[Daryl Edmonds 0]

Look at the Person View for that individual and you will see a name-var or some type of name tag listed in the tag list that has the same name as the primary name tag which is shown at the top of the Person View...

You were right, lawrpaul! I had a name-var tag, as his middle name on the marriage records, and susequent childrens birth records, was different to his birth record. Is that the correct way to record something like that or is there another way, which won't create a second listing?

 

Edit: Thanks, Virginia. Yes, thats what mine looked like.

Edited July 13, 2007 by daryl edmonds

[Terry Reigel 0]

I had a name-var tag, as his middle name on the marriage records, and susequent childrens birth records, was different to his birth record. Is that the correct way to record something like that or is there another way, which won't create a second listing?

If you enter the name in any type of Name tag it will appear in the Picklist and Project Explorer. They are lists of names, not lists of people.

 

So why enter name variations in Name tags? While some users create name tags for every variation found on sources, that seems silly to me. I create name tags only for names that I want to appear in output, with two exceptions - 1) married names, which I enter to be able to find the woman by that name, and 2) "standard" spelling of surnames for lines that changed the spelling over time, again so I can find them by that name and not have to remember which variation a particular person used. Aside from those two cases, I try to create name tags only for names actually used by the person, including non-obvious nicknames.

 

Then what to do with sources that don't agree? If one is simply more complete than the other - say one omits the middle name and the other includes it - I create one name tag and note in the Citation Detail of the citations what each one said. If I think one is simply wrong, I enter the variation I think is correct, and again note in the CD what each said. If there are a variety of spellings, especially in times when folks didn't care much about uniform spelling, I pick the one that seems most reliable and record all the variations in the CD.

 

If I think the person actually changed his or her name, I do create a Name-Chg tag and note in the memo the details of why. If I find a non-obvious nickname, I record that in a Name-Nick tag.

 

For more details see my article on Name Variations.