Womens surnames - nee or married?

[Susan P 0]

I'm a relative newbie to this program. It's more intuitive than I had anticipated based on some reviews.

 

When I'm entering surnames for a married woman who has taken her spouse's surname, do I enter the woman's married surname or her birth surname? I suppose it's really a matter of choice. Since some women do not change their surnames upon marrying, I suppose I should use their current surname. If the parents' names are entered, then it's evident what her birth surname likely was.

 

I think I answered my own question. From a clear genealogical record perspective, is is advisable to enter the current surname for the woman and then capture her birth surname via the addition of parents?

 

Thanks.

 

Susan

[John Cardinal 0]

I believe that standard genealogical practice is to record information about women using their birth surnames. In TMG, as in life, people can have multiple names, and so it's pretty common for TMG users to add married names for all married women. In some cases, the women may have only gone by their married name after marriage, but in other cultures and times, they did not.

 

So, let's assume we have a girl named Jane born to Mr. and Mrs. Doe:

 

Jane Doe

 

She then marries Mr. Smith. In TMG, you would add a Name-Marr tag, and she would have two names:

 

*Jane Doe

Jane Smith

 

You can even add her birth/maiden surname to her Name-Marr record if you want:

 

*Jane Doe

Jane (Doe) Smith

 

If you search for her under either name you will find the same person.

 

The "*" indicates her "primary" name, the name by which she will be shown in charts or reports that only display a single name due to space constraints or genealogical precedent/standards.

 

Hope this helps.

[Michael Hannah 0]

John has provided an excellent description of these names. Creating this Name-Marr tag as an alternative name for this person gives one added feature in TMG which I use a lot. Each Event tag offers the option of selecting any of the defined alternate names to be used instead of the primary name as part of the narrative text that will be printed in reports associated with that event. Really allows you the ability to customize your reports.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[retsof 0]

If maiden names are entered from the bottom up, when parents are entered, it can be set to prompt and enter the married name (NAME-MARR) automatically.

 

I enter ANOTHER special married name (only by personal preference) containing the maiden name and all married names in parenthesis in order, if possible. Why? I'm a Foster. My grandmother was a Smith. Another grandmother was a Johnson. Several other prolific families are in there that are tightly intermarried, so I need some specific combinations of names. I needed another way to quickly find some of these people with common surnames rather than looking at several pages of Smiths.

Edited April 4, 2008 by retsof

[BoricuaSeeker 0]

Here is a related thread that a couple of people helped me out on. http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index...?showtopic=9517

[retsof 0]

I also remember posting over there. I don't think that the LENGTH of any name will cause a problem.

[retsof 0]

You can even add her birth/maiden surname to her Name-Marr record if you want:

 

*Jane Doe

Jane (Doe) Smith

I had been using Doe(Smith) as an extra, but I like your idea of (Doe)Smith to gather all of the maiden names under the "(" index in Second Site.

 

I only use one of these to cover multiple marriages, as

(Doe)Smith-Johnson-Brown

 

I originally thought of using

Jane Doe

Smith

Johnson

Brown

(Doe)Smith

(Doe)Smith-Johnson

(Doe)Johnson

(Doe)Brown

(Doe)Smith-Johnson-Brown

 

to cover her complete timeline, but that was overkill.

 

I am sticking with

Jane Doe as complete maiden name

Smith generated for first marriage

Johnson generated for second marriage

Brown generated for third marriage

(Doe)Smith-Johnson-Brown manually added

 

TMG will fill in the complete name in the picklist, so there will be another entry for every name-marr

 

Exception:

If somebody marries a cousin or somebody with the same last name, you would have

Jane Doe

Doe generated for first marriage

(Doe)Doe manually added

 

The picklist would show two entries for Jane Doe. I remove the first name-marr. It's too much thought to remember NOT to generate it in the first place.

Edited April 4, 2008 by retsof