Help:Conventions/Person name

Quick reference

Further information

The following conventions are designed to:

• facilitate matching records
• assist future researchers to correctly identify individuals

Primary name

The primary name (which is the name you enter when you add a Person page) is the name the person was assigned at birth. Thus, for a woman it is her maiden name.

Exceptions

• For a person adopted as an infant or young child, the name assigned at adoption may be used instead of the name assigned at birth (especially if their ancestry is traced through their adoptive family). The birth name, if known, can be added as an alternate name.
• If a person adopted the surname of a step-parent early in life (especially if they passed that surname on to their children), the adopted surname may be used as the primary name. In such a case, the birth name must be entered as an alternate name so that future contributors can match persons correctly, and a note should be added so that confusion regarding the identity of the birth parents does not arise.
• See the Wikipedia exception below.

Notes

• When there are multiple spellings of a person`s surname and you are aware of a commonly accepted spelling (such as used in a published genealogy about this family), use the commonly accepted spelling. If you cannot determine a commonly accepted spelling, another approach is to use the most common spelling used by the person's children. Other spellings that have appeared on the person's records should be added as alternate names. The intent is to help people find the page when they search.

• If the surname was in the process of changing from one variant to another, enter the different spellings as alternate names.
• Note that it is not necessary to enter every variant, including misspellings, for every person in a family. Instead, WeRelate uses Surname pages to associate common spellings with variations and common misspellings, to support searching.

Alternate names

Add alternate names for spelling variations as well as nicknames, AKA's, aliases, legal name changes, and pseudonyms (including pen names, stage names, and any other names designed for the public sphere). If only one part of the name (e.g., given name) is different from the primary name, you may choose to enter only that part and leave the other part blank (the blank part will be displayed as a series of underscores).

Each name variation goes in either the primary name or a separate alternate name. Do not, for example, string together the legal name and a nickname, or a maiden name and a married name in the same name line. However, see further instructions below on how to handle dit names and Scandinavian names, where multiple parts of a surname are put in the same field.

• Baptismal Name: Use this if the person was assigned a different name from their birth name at baptism, as occurs in some cultures.

• Immigrant Name: Use this for the name recorded on an immigration, emigration or passenger's list, if different from the primary name. This can also be used for the name a person adopted after immigrating to a new country (e.g., "Johann Schmidt" became "John Smith").

• Married Name:

• Use this when a woman's married name is known but nothing else is known about her marriage and no marriage record is being created. For example, if the first record of a woman identifies her as "Jane Smith, widow" her primary name would be "Jane Unknown" and her married name would be "Jane Smith".
• Use this to indicate that a woman changed her name upon marriage if this might otherwise be in doubt (e.g., when the woman lived in a culture and/or time where a name change was either unusual or could not be assumed).
• Use this to indicate that either or both spouses changed their name on marriage to a blended name (e.g., Smith-Jones).

Note:

• Routine creation of married name entries for women whose married names can be assumed from their marriage records is discouraged because it can get out-of-sync with marriage records when marriage records are corrected, causing confusion for future researchers. Such entries also add work for the person who corrects a marriage record.

• Religious Name: Use this if the person adopted a name for religious purposes, such as Sister Mary Magdalena.

• Alt Name: Use this for all other alternative names, such as nicknames, other names the person was known as, alternatives that may appear on various documents, birth name when not selected as the primary name, etc.

Components of a name

Regardless of whether a name is the primary name or an alternate name, it is comprised of up to 4 components: prefix, given name(s), surname and suffix.

When creating a Person page, you can only enter the given name(s) and surname. Once the page is created, you can add a prefix and/or suffix.

When you search, whatever you enter in the given name field matches both prefixes and given names, and whatever you enter in the surname field matches both surnames and suffixes.

Given name

• For the primary name, enter both first and middle name(s) in full, if known.
• If an initial is known rather than a full name, enter it without a period. In the case of multiple initials, enter with a single space between them. Use the same convention for individuals who were given only initials as first names, e.g., R J
• Don't include nicknames in the given name field of the primary name; enter nicknames as alternate names.
• Punctuation and special characters may be used if they are part of the legal name, e.g., Jean-Baptiste, Françoise, Bjørn
  • Searches for Jean will find Jean-Baptiste and "Jean Baptiste"; searches for Jean-Baptiste will find "Jean Baptiste", but will not find just "Jean" if the exact checkbox is checked.
• Don't use quotation marks, slashes, parentheses, or square or angle brackets ("",//,(),[],<>) to denote a nickname or AKA.
• If it is clear that an infant died without being named (e.g., a stillbirth or the death record indicates that the infant was unnamed), leave the given name blank.
• If the given name is unknown, leave it blank. Don't enter "Unknown" or any other variation, such as Unk, FNU, etc.

Surname

• Do not enter surnames in all capitals; use initial caps only.
• If the surname is unknown, leave it blank. Do not enter "Unknown" or use abbreviations such as LNU, question marks, dashes, or brackets.
• Use of punctuation and special characters is permitted as with Given Names above.
• In the case of articles and contractions, you may wish to enter variations in the Alternate Name field (Van der Mark, Vandermark).
• Enter the name as it was used by the individual, including abbreviations if applicable: St. Leger.
• Dit names: Enter the full version in the Surname field: e.g., Destroismaisons dit Picard.
• If an individual was given a multiple surname, show as one entry with a single space (no comma or hyphen) between each name: e.g., Gonzales Diaz.

Name prefix

• Use the name prefix field for military, religious or professional titles (e.g., Capt., Rev., Dr.).

Note

• Civil titles (e.g., governor, senator) should be entered as individual events rather than in the name field.

Name suffix

Use the name suffix field:

• for noble titles (e.g., Duke of ____)
• to distinguish men with exactly the same name in continuous generations of the same family (e.g., Jr., Sr., III).
• when two children in a family have the same given name(s) and you do not know and cannot estimate a birth or christening date to distinguish them. In this case, enter (1), (2), etc. in the name suffix field to clarify the birth sequence.

Scandinavian names

Rural areas in Norway, Denmark and Sweden did not introduce inherited surnames until recent centuries. People were known by their given name plus a patronymic and possibly either a "byname" (such as unge or gamle) or the name of the farm on which they lived. The byname would come before the given name (e.g., unge Jørgen Hansen), while the farm name would come after the patronymic (e.g., Halvor Hansson Berge).

Where names incorporated the farm name

For regions using the form <given name(s)> <patronymic> <farm name> (e.g., Halvor Hansson Berge), enter the name as follows:

Given name field: <given names>

Surname field: <patronymic> <farm name>

The primary name should include the farm name where the person was born (or the first known farm name if the person’s origin is unknown). Alternate names should be created for subsequent farms where they lived. There should only be one farm name per version of the name – that is, do not include alternate names in the same name.

Where a written record uses the holding (sub-farm) name instead of the farm name (e.g., Kittel Johnsson Sagabukti, where Sagabukti is a holding in Kviteseid farm), the name can be entered this way as an alternate name, but the preferred name should include the farm name (e.g., Kittel Johnsson Kviteseid).

Note

• Farm names were widely used in Norway - for Norwegian genealogy, you should assume that the farm name is part of the name. They were also used in Northern Jutland (Denmark), while bynames were used in the Danish Isles. If you are not certain about the naming practice in the area you are researching, check to see if the farm name is used in parish registers and other documents in conjunction with the names of people. If so, assume that the farm name is part of the name.

Where names did not incorporate the farm name

For regions using the form <optional byname> <given name(s)> <patronymic> (e.g., Jørgen Hansen, unge Jørgen Hansen, or gamle Jørgen Hansen), enter the name as follows:

Prefix field: <byname> (if applicable)

Given name field: <given names>

Surname field: <patronymic>

Exception (applies to all Scandinavian names)

• If an individual was baptized with a patronymic surname and later received a different legal surname, enter the patronymic as the last middle name in the Given Name field and the legal surname in the Surname field. For example:

Given name field: Signe Gustava Jansdatter

Surname field: Krug

The Wikipedia exception

For a person without a conventional surname (e.g., a medieval person or member of the nobility), if the person has a Wikipedia page, you may choose to structure the primary name so that the default person page title generated automatically by WeRelate will match the title of the Wikipedia page. This is not required - the page can be renamed to match the Wikipedia title if necessary.