Should this become the official WikiTree policy? Extending the use of the suffix field.

Question

I would like to propose a change to the use of the suffix field. Currently the Wikitree Name Field Guidelines help page says this about suffixes:

Preferably, this should only be used for the Suffix at Birth.

And under the General Naming Conventions further up the page, the advice is 

Use their conventions instead of ours

I propose that the use of the suffix field is formally extended to include permanent "post-nominal" letters (post-nominal = after the name) - those letters which come after a person's last name, which the person acquired during their lifetime.

Examples of these include Bt (Baronet), DD (Doctor of Divinity) and Esq (Esquire)

In addition I propose that the post-nominal letters are used on Wikitree as they would have been used by that person according to the country and time period in which they lived.

I am aware that that was extensively discussed in two G2G posts in 2018 post 1 and post 2 in posts submitted by Joe Cochoit and Ros Haywood respectively.

Why am I bringing this back for discussion now?

The fact that the subject was being discussed then shows that the Wikitree community was, and still is, using the suffix field extensively for post-nominal letters which the person didn't have at birth.

Joe Cochiot's excellent proposal was very much in the same vein as this one. The wide-ranging discussion it started got bogged down by trying to define exactly what would be permissible in all situations, and having a global check sheet for everything.

I propose a change in the Name Field Guidelines to a general statement about the use of the suffix field, and then individual Projects would set up the guidelines for its use (within their own Profile Standards page) for the geographical area and/or time period.

What would be the benefit of formalising the use of the suffix field for acquired post-nominal letters? 

Using the suffix box for post-nominal letters has already been partially formalised as the Suggestions report has exceptions for some of these

Wikitree members would be able to add appropriate post-nominal letters to profiles without adding to their suggestion list.

Projects would be able to draw up lists of appropriate frequently used post-nominal letters to add to the exclusion list.

Projects would also be able to monitor the use of post-nominal letters in profiles which came under their remit and suggest correct usage.

What would be the drawbacks?

There would be a potential for a free for all, with inappropriate items added to the field.

Monitoring by the Projects of their suggestion lists would show whether this was actually an issue. If there were certain items persistently added they would be added to the exclusions list if the entry was appropriate. If it was inappropriate, the Project would need to state this in their Profile Standards.

Some members may find that something they had added created a Suggestion because it hadn't been added to the approved list even though it was appropriate. There would have to be a process to enable new exclusions from the Suggestion report, probably via an appropriate Project.

How would this change be implemented?

1. The Help page would need to be rewritten to say something like this:
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The suffix field may be used for:

a) attributes which a person was deemed to have been born with (e.g. Jr or III)

b) official suffixes acquired by a person at any time in their life. The post-nominal (literally "after the name") letters should be an official abbreviation and defined in full in the biography along with the date the person acquired it. Examples of these include Bt (Baronet), DD (Doctor of Divinity) and Esq (Esquire).

Do not use punctuation marks (full stops or periods, hyphens, spaces, etc.) between the letters of a suffix.

Do not end post-nominal abbreviations with a punctuation mark (a period or full stop) and separate multiple post-nominal abbreviations each by a single space.

Enter only the post-nominal letters which that person used. If they acquired many awards and honours, enter the most important ones and describe the full list in the biography.

Different countries and time periods will have different conventions. If you are in any doubt about whether to enter a suffix or how to enter them correctly, raise a question in G2G or contact the most appropriate Project.

Do not use the suffix field for personal coding, nicknames (which has its own field), titles (in the nickname field) or locations (in location fields or in the biography)

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2. Projects would be encouraged to write their own profile standards which would include the appropriate use of the suffix box for their location and time period.

3. The Data Doctor suggestions for suffixes (761, 762, 763, 764 and 767) would be adjusted with exclusions for the most common post-nominal letters. These exclusions would be suggested and monitored by relevant Projects.

4. Members who wish to add a suffix but can't find guidance for its use in a Project style guide specific to that profile should raise a question in G2G.

I would value your thoughts on this. I have added the "Yes I support this change" and "No, I don't support this change". Please show your choice by upvoting one of these answers and explaining your reasons.

Many thanks

Jo

Edited to add line breaks

Edited (2) to added section 4 re G2G guidance

Edited (3) on 12 April to define the use of punctuation in post-nominal letters

Comments

Chris,  Thanks for the clarification of the original thought process leading to the decision and guidance.  An interesting perspective on this use of Suffix, is that although we write John Doe II or Jane Doe Jr, we are really using the information in the suffix field as a modifier of first name, not last name.

It is because John or Jane is being named after their father or mother's first name and LNAB that they need the modifier to their first name to tell them apart. This is similar to the usage in royalty where we refer to George V rather than Hanover XXV.

So maybe we have two fields - Name modifier (for the roman numerals and Jr/Sr etc) with the explanation currently used for Suffix and a second field for Honorific Post Nominals as described by Jo.

Just a thought,

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Chris,

If I read you right, then the creation of the Suffix box was to stop people messing up the LNAB box with Sr, Jr or generational numbering because then the match algorithm doesn't work. Fair dos.

But since we now have the suffix box, (and I don't understand the reasoning behind the suffix having to go in every iteration of the display name) why should its use only be sanctioned for US-centric profiles? If the rest of the world is not supposed to use it for whatever post-nominal letters are relevant to the culture or the period, it makes a nonsense of the aspiration for "our name displays to work as well as possible for any person, in any culture and language, at any time in history. We want them to work for all members..."

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What would people think of a rule like the following?

"Suffix appears in every name display on WikiTree, even when a Prefix, Middle Name, or Current Last Name do not appear. Therefore, it is generally reserved for suffixes that are an essential part of the person's name. It is usually a Suffix at Birth, e.g. Jr. It may be a suffix or post-nominal acquired during a person's lifetime if the person themselves would have included it when writing their full name, e.g. Bt for Baronet. It should never be a suffix acquired after death or a suffix the person themselves would not have used.

"If the person had multiple suffixes, it should generally only be the most important one for identification purposes. Others should be described in the biography. If a Prefix could substitute for a Suffix, e.g. Dr. instead of M.D. or Ph.D., that is recommended.

"Suffix is limited to 10 characters."

Two quick points of clarification for our conversation here:

• Projects help apply general style rules to specific circumstances and profiles. That's true for all name fields and style rules. Project's recommendations need to be consistent with the general rules and cannot conflict with the recommendations of other projects.
• I don't think it would be practical to expand the Suffix field, create a second suffix field, or change our name displays so that the suffix doesn't appear in all of them. Nothing is ruled out, but those solutions would involve multiple difficulties.

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I think you made a very good call here, thank you Chris.

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Sounds excellent to me.  Please convert it to an answer so I can upvote it! 

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Chris - looks good. Thank you.

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That works for the England Project and the way post nominals are used in England. Thank you for this ruling on a  more inclusive use of the suffix box.

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I support this - it accommodates the different usages of suffixes in different times and places.

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Thanks, all.

To make sure more people see it, I've made this a fresh proposal: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1023631/should-this-be-the-new-style-rule-for-the-suffix-field

Since Jo's proposal got so much support, we should be able to finalize this quickly if there aren't a lot of new objections.

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There are several suffixes that indicate a person's profession, altho many are from the 20th century: CPA (accountant), JD (lawyer), EEd, FACS (surgeons), MD (Medical Doctors). DDS, Dentist) DO, (osteopaths), etc.

Some are also categorized as "Doctor," others are not but all are an earned professional recognition that speak to academic time spent learning a profession.

I know the British have all of their "honors" as well.

Maybe we should put some of that info in the field.

rsl

Answer 1

Yes I support this change.

Comments

This is really well thought out Jo, thank you. I support this change though I do not doubt it will generate a fair amount of discussion here.

Essentially I think people will question the roles of projects, but I think my thoughts are that if I’m not in a project and/or don’t know where to ask if I see an suggestion on a profile I manage due to a suffix I would ask here, maybe G2G should be emphasised as an option where there is no obvious project to contact, or if you don’t know how?

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That's a good thought regarding G2G Lizzie. I had already added it in the suggested rewritten Help page section. But perhaps also needs to be reinforced in the "How would this change be implemented?" section as a subsection of its own.

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In practice, to a great extent this is the policy widely and very sensibly adopted already by WT members, whatever the official guidance may say.

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I agree with this well thought-out proposal. Projects are the logical place to develop standards on the use of the suffix field. They have the necessary specialised knowledge about their region/topic. It is true that some regions/topics don't yet have projects, but I don't see why this should hold back the rest of us.

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Yes indeed. Very well thought through.

I would add that Sr and Jr are allowed but Senior and Junior are not. Also that Knight Bachelor has no Post nominals. Also that KT is only allowed in the case of Knight of the Thistle, Kt is never allowed, Bt is allowed but BT is not.

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I support this change, the rule are at present not fit for purpose since it is widely ignored. I would add that the number of characters permitted should be increased (several modern degrees use more than eight letters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post-nominal_letters_(United_Kingdom) .Also the use of commas to separate  post nominals should be allowed. I agree that we should set standards for each country separately,  it was quite apparent in Joe's earlier thread that their importance and usage varies between countries.   

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I support this proposal. It seem obvious to me that a genealogy website that covers the whole world will have regional variations in the way a suffix is used.  Provision needs to be made to deal with the differences otherwise people will just ignore the rules. Thank you Jo for you work on this.

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Using suffixes for what someone is born with has always seemed somewhat perverse to me. I would suggest that it largely irrelevant that someone was John Doe Jnr when he was born. Should the suffix field then allow him to be "Jnr Snr" once he has his own son John and his father is no longer with us?

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I agree, also useful for the various military decorations of veterans.

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Yes, I support this change.  It could be the answer to thousands of Suggestion 798 Punctuation in Other Last Names.  

Such as "Major Sir Arnold Geoffroy de Montmorency, 19th Bt." His prefix: "Maj. Sir" 

Some people have many honors, others - not so much.  It would be nice to have space to sing their praises.

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Yes I support the change, with the guidelines to let project management rein in those within their scope that may try to misuse the field

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Having read comments from others I just wanted to add my support for this proposal. As things stand I couldn't add any post-nominal to my family including myself and my partner as this is not in the guidelines even though we have a legal right to use them. I would only use professionally but it does define my occupation.

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I support your proposal. It would make it easier to identify people. It looks like the guidelines would be clearer too. It would be beneficial to many projects.

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Jo, this is great. You have thought through all the issues and presented a logical and well constructed case. The proposal to simply the complex problem of rationalising the many historical, national and cultural practices by managing within projects is excellent. It should lead to more clarity in the long term. It certainly gets my vote.

Answer 2

No, I don't support this change

Comments

 individual Projects would set up the guidelines for its use . Each country is different.  There are only a few countries with projects. What happens to countries without projects?  I cannot for the reason of incompleteness support the proposal.

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Hi Louis, Joe Cochoit's original proposal got sidelined by many people suggesting suffixes which would be used in specific countries and time periods.

I am suggesting a general policy of liberalisation for the suffix field, and then the individual projects (of which there are many for countries and time periods) can define what are appropriate suffixes for their use. Do you have a particular country in mind?

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You did not address countries without projects. Is it going to be a free for all standard. I can do what I like when there is no project.

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Not sure why you wouldn't add c) Suffixes that were acquired or used during the person's lifetime like Sr. (Senior).

Edit to add: 

In looking the suggestions definitions link it seems that the database already supports this policy change request and matches both your request and c) acquired suffixes like Sr. (Senior).

Maybe this policy change could be as simple as saying to only use suffixes that appear in the linked database.  Then if someone comes across a suffix variant, they can just ask for it to be added (like "der Alt").

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Hi Louis,

I don’t claim to be an expert on suggestions, however all approved suffixes would be submitted to Wikitree so they do not create a suggestion on the profile. If you find you have a suggestion on a profile due to a none approved suffix you would ask in G2G why it is not approved and who can help.

You could not ‘do as you like’ same as you can’t now. Any entry on a profile that is irregular creates a suggestion. Obvious ones like born after mothers death, and less obvious ones like incorrect suffix in naming field :-)

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Post-nominal letters are not part of a person's name. Adding them to name fields just corrupts the data model.

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What are all approved suffixes? Who approved them? All I see is a broad definition which the person acquired during their lifetime.

That means anything is acceptable. Even suffixes for holding office as a club or fraternity secretary which is usually a temporary position. Point is that some Post-nominal letters are acquired only temporarily.
How are you going to address this? I still don't see a standard. Even faith based suffixes are temporary which people would loose if they left the faith, but they acquired it during their lifetime.

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Louis.As I see it, the proposal suggests that projects should write their own  standards. I'm sure that these will not be plucked from thin air. There are, at least in the UK , guides that include generally 'accepted' post nominal letters for use in formal address. (Official guides would include civil service and joint service guides but the Oxford Style guide referenced in the wikipedia article is well accepted). Other Commonwealth countries have similar lists.  Even prior to official guides it should be fairly easy to draw up lists; there were far fewer degrees, awards and appointments in the past. 

Other countries will have their own conventions and some  may use few or none at all. That's not a problem. 

We already have varied guidelines for naming conventions https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Name_Field_Guidelines. This proposal is surely just an extension of these. 

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This proposal is very wide and not properly defined. To prevent future conflicts it should be properly defined. Your explanation is an interpretation which would not have been necessary if the proposal was properly defined.

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Hi Louis

I am suggesting that the Principle of extending the use of the suffix field is formally accepted. This is what this question is asking. The question is not about how each suffix is micromanaged.

If the Principle is accepted, then it will be up to the country and era Projects to define appropriate use of the suffix field for their time and place. What conflicts do you envisage?

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Whenever something is not properly defined conflict is inevitable. You use terms like" those letters which come after a person's last name, which the person acquired during their lifetime." and "official" 

Though one would rightly expect that from academic degrees, military decorations or an honour bestowed upon someone, you do not specify what is the case when an office is held and that person vacates that office or position for whatever reason and can no longer use that post-nominal. Do you consider it just to add that permanently to the profile. Same goes for clubs, fraternities and the like.

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Thanks, Jo, and thanks to those helping to think this through.

I want to clarify something regarding the role of projects. Projects elaborate on style rules to apply them to specific situations. The rules developed in projects are applications of general rules.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Style_FAQ

While I'm at it, I should say that the Suggestions reports have no official role to play here. Those suggestions are developed independently by Ales and the Data Doctors.

I am working on writing up something to explain the original rationale for the "at birth" rule for the suffix field. I can't really recall the whole discussion, and unfortunately we were not using G2G at the time. But there is some logic to the system we have now and I want to make sure it's considered.

Answer 3

I agree that the suffix rules need to be changed but I disagree that we should change the field to only include post nominal letters or suffixes only of an official nature.

As an example, a man named John Smith who has a son, John Smith Jr., and the elder is referred to as John Smith Sr., we should allow the suffix field to include this unofficial suffix.

Comments

And, If John Smith Jr then called his son John Smith? 

I joke, we don’t really used Sr and Jr in England, so I don’t really understand how the usage works in names passed down through generations, but I think the proposal is definitely a step in the right direction :-). I’ve given it an up vote :-)

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Hi SJ, I proposed an extension to the current policy, (which still includes the use of suffixes Jr etc which people are born with.)

I used the term official for post-nominal letter for honours and awards so that people added the correct suffix rather than an abbreviation which may not be the proper one for the purpose.

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we don’t really used Sr and Jr in England

I have found many instances of Junior and Senior suffixes in 18th and 17th century English records as well as other suffixes such as "The elder," or "The younger," and I've seen these in German, such as "der Alt," (senior). 

And, If John Smith Jr then called his son John Smith?

Sometimes you have two Jr's in a row and sometimes Jr. becomes II and his son becomes Jr.  In this case you would have John Sr., John II, and John Jr.

I seems common sense to have the suffix of the profile match the suffix of the person and the documents that we find about the person.

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In English records , including parish register burial entries,  Snr and Jnr are frequently used to distinguish two people of the same name, in the same place but they aren't necessarily father and son. I'm writing a bio at the moment where several records refer to the man as William Aden  Senior. His sons were Arthur and Constantine. He had an nephew  named William.

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I think we need to draw a distinction between usage on a single document (which may in fact have been the one and only time that Snr/Jnr was applied to the individual concerned in his or her lifetime) and a suffix used de rigueur.

Apart from on Wikitree, I have never seen II or III used as part of a name in England (other than monarchs, obviously).

Answer 4

Jo, I think this is a sensible proposal.

What happens now when people use unapproved suffixes?  Michael Cayley suggests that they are already being used, no matter the official policy.  So I imagine if people get suggestions, they can mark them false?

It makes no sense at all to suggest the field should be limited to suffixes attributed at birth (as is apparently included in the current policy), if we are to include such things as DD.  Who is born with a graduate degree?

A usage that concerns me more is that of Sr., Jr., etc. and I, II, III etc.  I don't see that you've addressed that (because they are not "official"?) above.  My own belief is that we should not attribute these usages unless they actually appear in records related to the person.  Just because a person is named after this father, that does not mean he ever used the suffix "Jr.", and when we just stick it onto the profile, that can be confusing when another family member (parent, child, cousin, etc.) actually did use that suffix.  Likewise, i wonder if anyone should place the suffixes "I,", "II," "III," etc. on profiles if they were never used by the actual person in any known records?

Comments

Hi Julie,

The "suffixes which people are born with" are already sanctioned by WT and includes all the generational numbering widely used in the USA. I'm asking for an approved extension to the use of the suffix field which we in the England project can make use of, as we don't use generational numbering, but do use the abbreviations for honours and awards.

I would think it would be up to the Projects covering those areas of the world that do use generational numbering to define how these are used. In the England Project Profile Standards we have asked that they are not used for English profiles.

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Thank you. I think I understand, but where should I look to find the projects that define generational numbering in the U.S.?  And do there really need to be multiple standards?  I'm concerned, for instance, about a case where a William Jones has a profile but no parents, and yet is arbitrarily assigned "William I" and generations of his descendants get numbered II, III, etc. with no evidence they ever used the suffixes.

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Julie, I too am confused with the way Sr., Jr., etc. and I, II, III etc. are used in the U.S.  The leaders of the U.S. projects are the people who could best answer your questions about how generational numbering is defined. It seems to me that clear guidelines are hard to find.  Jo's proposal that "individual Projects would set up the guidelines for its use (within their own Profile Standards page) for the geographical area and/or time period." would encourage projects to address this matter.

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I don't think it is WikiTree projects who define this.  This is a US cultural thing to use III as part of a person's name.  WikiTree merely reflects this.

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I don't think I stated my question(s) well.  Let me try again, and add another:

What about the cases in which a person never used the suffix, and it is not found in a single record about him, but some WikiTree user labels him with it anyway?  Should that be done?  

Should a person be inferred to have been born with a suffix such as "III" if he didn't use it, particularly when he could easily have been "IV," "V," etc. instead if we knew more about his ancestors?  What happens if we do go back another generation and find an earlier person with the same name?  Then do we re-number the whole group?

I see that Jo, Lizzie, and Ros are all in the England Project, and it makes perfect sense to me for there to be separate standards for that project, and for other major projects, especially as they cover early periods in history.  However, I do nearly all my work on colonial Americans, who may be covered by several different projects or none at all.  (At least, not officially, as in having a sticker on the profile.)  It seems to me there should be one standard for this group, but if there is I don't know where to find it.

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If a person never used I, II, III - but a WikiTreer puts it in anyway (say, so they can differentiate between the generations) - then that is a personal coding system and is not allowed.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Name_Fields#Personal_coding_systems

It's the US Projects which will be able to decide how they want to use I, II, III, because as far as I know it's only US citizens who use that numbering system for people other than kings/queens.  In England, for example, if a man is "John Smith, First Baronet of..." he is NOT John Smith I.

If you cannot find the naming system for a particular project, you need to contact the leadership of that project.

Answer 5

I support this proposal, though I have two very minor suggestions: 

Do not use full stops between the letters.

The term "full stop" is probably unfamiliar to many, as it is chiefly a British term. In North America, this would most commonly be termed a "period". 

Would it perhaps be better to say,

Do not use punctuation marks (e.g. full stops, periods, spaces, etc...) between the letters of a suffix.

I believe that it helps to be abundantly clear on what is expected, so it would be wise to exclude spaces and other punctuation, otherwise someone might abbreviate Doctor of Divinity as "D D" or "D-D" rather than "DD".

As your proposal allows for multiple suffixes, 

If they acquired many awards and honours, enter the most important ones

it should perhaps be made clear how to separate multiple suffixes. I would suggest that we follow the style of Wikipedia, where those select post-nomial abbreviations are separated by a single space between each, e.g.

Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau PC CC CH QC FRSC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau

Hence it may be advisable to add:

Do not end post-nomial abbreviations with a punctuation mark (i.e. periods or full stops) and separate multiple post-nomial abbreviations each by a single space.

Otherwise this all seems very sensible. 

Thank you for the clarity and comprehensiveness of the write-up!

Comments

Very good points, JN.  At the risk of sounding ignorant, not for the first time, I did not know what a full stop was. 

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Thank you JN, all very sensible amendments to the original proposal and I will add them into the question text above. It shows my Englishness that I used the term "full stop" but didn't realise that my friends in the USA might not know what that meant.

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Julie & Jo, 

It's a common issue with discussions on international sites: How do we express an idea so that everyone will understand it? And that isn't an easy thing to overcome since everyone is situated in their own cultural and personal niches. 

But on the point of learning something new, there's this wonderful comic by Randall Munroe of xkcd that offers a truly good philosophy and approach: 

I recommend viewing the comic directly on the xkcd site ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ ), since each comic has an "alt text" which will appear when you hover your mouse over the image.

Even the most widely known factoids everyone learns at some point. Not knowing generally just means that a person hasn't had the right opportunity to learn it yet. So personally I consider it a privilege when I get to share or show a cool fact to a friend for the first time. 

And for anyone who reads that comic and doesn't know what's going on, check out this MythBusters video on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjbJELjLgZg

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Kudos for the first xkcd cartoon on WikiTree that I’ve seen!

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Although, being English, I had no idea what Mentos were... or what happened with them and Diet Coke

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It explodes

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I knew this Jo & we sell both :-). Also, try semi freezing a bottle of beer just until it’s ice cold, ideally corona though I’m not sure people are buying that much at the moment lol. Then wedge the top with a chunk of lime and observe :-) I learned this last week!

This could easily become a ‘feed to pass the time during lockdown’ ;-p

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I also saw this recently on TV so quite a few others will have could be more than that 10,000 average.

Answer 6

No, I do not support the change.  I suggest another way to handle this.

I would prefer that we have an additional field for current suffix (or suffix at death).  So we would have both suffix at birth and current suffix.

A man may be born as John Smith and die as John Smith Sr. His son may be born as John Smith Jr. and die as John Smith II.  

Another man may be born as Tom Tyler and die as Tom Tyler, MD.