Looking for guidance with Spanish/Mexican names and places

Question

Hello everyone! Recently getting back into building my tree and looking for genealogical standards regarding the following:

- Should I include accents/diacritics in Spanish names (María, Treviño, México, etc.)? Most of my family history is in Mexico, and growing up, I was taught that you ALWAYS include the accents, but on sites like Ancestry, searching for "María" would only turn up records with an accent and vice versa. I know I can use a * wildcard on many sites, but I was wondering what is common practice.

- Should I save the location of an event with its current or historical place name? In English or Spanish? For example, if an event occurred in present day Mexico in the late 1700s, should I record it as Mexico, New Spain, or Nueva España? I've even seen some use the full "Virreinato de Nueva España!" I could see using historical names (and in the language of that region) would be most useful for understanding the history of a location and the family there. And even if the present day name changes (though unlikely), I wouldn't have to go back and change hundreds of entries. But using present-day locations could help if exporting to a site or service with a map feature.

I've tried my best to look for a clear answer online, but there seems to be some disagreement. Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

¡Bienvenido!

Welcome to WikiTree and G2G, Victor.

There are tens of thousands of profiles with Mexican ancestry in WikiTree. I'm sure you'll find in WikiTree some of your ancestor pretty soon, probably going 6-7 generations back.

Take your time to see as many WikiTree help pages as you can, they are full of helpful hints on how things are done in WikiTree.

On place names see

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#Location_Field_Style_Guide

On name fields see

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

See also

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Spanish_Naming_conventions

Also, taking a look to other profiles may be of help, i. e.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hidalgo_y_Costilla-3

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_del_Campo-18

Again, welcome!

Comments

By the way, you can use "*" and "?" in the "Search" form.

See

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Search#Wildcards

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(The use of accents and uppercase/lowercase letters do not affect the search results)

Answer 2

We use the names as THEY used them and the places as they were known at the time (today's name/jurisdiction could change in the future).  Include the diacriticals.  You might use the "Other Last Names" and "Nicknames" field to include the name(s) without diacriticals to help in searches.

Answer 3

The most important thing is too have a person full name,

which will include fathers last name and mothers maiden

last name.Sample , Maria Gonzales Rodrigues,Gonzales fathers last name ,.Rodrigues, mothers maiden name.

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Comments

This isn't always true.  In colonial New Mexico, it was more common for them to use either the father's name or the mother's name.  The men almost always used their father's name but the women would use father's, mother's, paternal grandmother's, maternal grandmother's, etc.