Scotland - Profile Improvements Team

Hi Elaine,

The normal process on WikiTree, and we follow it in the Scotland Project, is to use the spelling from the birth or baptismal document if one is found. It may be that the person used a different spelling later in life, intentionally or not, and those later spellings should be documented in the OLN and CLN fields as appropriate. If there is not a birth record to be found, then we try to find a document that the person themselves had some say in, to show that perhaps that's the spelling they would have used. This is always a bit of a gamble especially when the person was not literate. But if, for example, they signed a document that's the spelling I would use for the LNAB.

If you are working with people who were landed gentry, nobles, etc., there is a page of further explanation here on Scotland - Name Field Guidelines

I hope that helps. Bobbie

That being said there are quite a few profiles that the LNAB needs to be changed. I don't have the authority to change them. And at times the parent's name in the profile will not exactly match parent's name in source. Please look at Airmet-2.

If the profile is an orphan and you can verify that the birth/baptism record supports the spelling change, you can adopt the profile, document the spelling, and make the change. Whenever possible, please check both Scotlands People and (if available) FamilySearch to verify that the spelling is consistent on the indexes for both sites, since I assume you won't be looking up the original records to view what the document says. Because of the issues of redirects, it is important that LNAB spelling changes not be done without great care & caution.

If the profile is managed by another member, you'll need to contact them with the source information that supports your suggested changes, as the LNAB can only be changed by the profile manager.