Is there a list of Suggestions, by number, with explanations? [closed]

Question

An hour ago, someone posted a question to G2G asking about the surname "Unknown" and its inappropriate variants on some WikiTree profiles.  I set out to find a help page for Surnames, or Unknowns, or Suggestions, that could help.  This is a lot harder than it ought to be!  Can anyone point me to a page that describes how to list the surname of a person whose surname is unknown?  Surely there is a particular suggestion for this, but what is it and how do I find it?

Comments

general guideline for birth surname field:

Help:Name_Fields#Last_Name_at_Birth

---

Thank you, Lindy.  You were right.  I just hard a hard time finding the relevant part.  I see now it is mentioned twice--once in the section you cited and once in the Special Rules section.

Answer 1

You asked multiple things in this question.  This is a link to the List of Suggestions for Name.

Comments

Yes, I did ask multiple questions.  I thought that if I could view a complete list of suggestions, I could review it and find the answer to the question I was trying to answer, and that it would also be useful for future questions.  

Then, with respect to the naming question, yes, the answer was included in the Name Fields Help page, although rather hard to find, I thought.

I'm giving you the star because overall, your answers were the most helpful.  (Thank you for the list of name suggestions.  Is there a list of all suggestions?)

---

That page has a list of All Suggestions, separated by the Type of Suggestions.  Ales has added some new Suggestions, so there are some missing from that list, but that column is fairly inclusive and also has a Difficulty Rating column to help people understand what may be 'more difficult' suggestions to understand and correct. 

---

Thanks for the star

---

I looked at the page again.  Very interesting.  Thanks for the link.  I did not fully realize how many ways there were to make a mistake on WikiTree!

Answer 2

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Name_Fields

Comments

Kathie, I did find that page.  If it mentions "Unknown" as a surname, please point me to the specific section.

---

There have been numerous discussions about the variants of use by members for Unknown in all fields. Unknowns project has the following  List of Unknowns

---

This is the section

Special Rules for Required fields

Edited to add a link which I did not include initially.

---

Thank you, Linda.  Re your first page, it does have a lot of information, maybe not easily understood for a beginner.  

Did you mean there to be a link in your second comment?  It's not working for me.

---

There is also a footnote on the Name Help Page

"Using the same convention for unknown last names is important. In the long run, this clarifies things for everyone. It groups these profiles together in various alphabetical sorts. And we can program our systems to ignore profiles named Unknown in certain contexts."

---

Beginners would not see the Unknown List.  It isn't meant for most people to see it.  If people are unsure of what to use for a name, they should be referring to the Name Help page, which states that it should be 'Unknown'.

---

Thanks, Linda.  I see that now, and scrolling back up the page, I see this:

"Our system requires the basic first name and last name fields. They cannot be blank. This necessitates a few special case rules.

• If the first name or last name is unknown, use Unknown in the field. Do not use Not Sure, NN, Wife of X, Adopted, etc.^[1]"

I don't think this advice should be so hard to find!

---

Julie, here's a tip: When you look at the Help index, my advice is "don't bother with it".  Instead, use the search box upper right.  All you would have to do is put one word in, like 'unresponsive', or 'unknown', and it will find ALL the pages where that appears.

Note: when it produces its pages of search results, you will see two or three Google results first, which you can safely scroll past.

---

I did that, Ros, before I asked the question.

---

Since you did that, may I ask why you didn't see the answer?  After the Google results, the answer was the first one in the list:

Help:Name Fields

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Name_Fields

29 Apr 2020 ... If the first name or last name is unknown, use Unknown in the field. Do not use Not Sure, NN, Wife of X, Adopted, etc. If the first name or last ...

---

Not every search produces the same results.  As I understand it, Google tailors search results to users' previous search history.  Even when I search for the exact same thing twice, at different times, I don't always get the same results.

---

Frequently, just searching on google, including the word wikitree will give you great results.  That also helps wikitree results with google.

---

Thanks, Linda.