Search for Profiles Written with Non Roman Alphabets

Question

I was reading this discussion about profiles written with Non Roman Alphabets:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/178270/use-of-non-roman-alphabets

I was also reading this discussion about profiles written with Non Roman Alphabets:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/553952/search-does-not-find-non-roman-names-the-other-last-names-field

I was responding to a question from a member yesterday and he pointed out a need:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1091991/have-no-problem-find-his-profile-but-your-system-can-not-find

When I searched  for هادی خان ادیب سمیعی , I was able to search for the profile when I added  ادیب سمیعی in the family name field. I had to be precise in Persian/Farsi. I could not find it using only one of the family names. If I searched using only ادیب or if I searched using سمیعی , I could not find the profile  for هادی خان ادیب سمیعی .

Since the profile was added in Persian/Farsi, I could not find the profile using any English translations of the name. I tried searching using the family name Samii Adib as well as the family names Adib Samii, Abid, and Samii. If the profile is not entered using the Roman alphabet, is there a way that can be created so that the profile can be found in a language that uses the Roman alphabet?

Comments

If the Other Last Name and Other Nicknames fields are used for English translation, it would probably work.

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I tried searching for my great-grandmother Alberta Violet (Thomas) Couturier aka Beausejour using "Beausejour", the name that I had placed in the "other last name field". She does not come up in the "Beausejour" listing. I believe at this point we cannot search for people based on names in the "other last name field".

Based on the discussions that I posted above, this was discussed in 2015, and this was going on the "To-Do list" back in 2018. A new member joined on August 18 and he had trouble with this issue on August 19.

I am suggesting that this move up the "To-Do list" if we would like to attract and support members who use Non Roman Alphabets.

Answer 1

I have had an email from a member suggesting that searches for names using only "nicknames" and "other last names" are possible. If that is true, could we add notes to the side, suggesting that members can add a "nickname" and an "other last name" using the Roman alphabet if they would like members to be able to search for their profiles using the Roman alphabet. This information may exist in a guide, but it should be more prominent if it is the case.

Answer 2

I'd like to see more support for using non-Roman alphabets. Since we are supposed to create the profiles using the names of the individuals as they were known in their time and place, using only English for the LNAB is a real problem.

I tried creating my 3x and 4x great-grandparents profiles using Hebrew, but received errors. I could only use the English translation of the Russian transliteration. Not ideal since although they might have spoken Russian (they spoke many languages), they were Jewish, their legal names were in Hebrew and they spoke Yiddish and they lived in what is today, Ukraine. I had to relegate their correct LNAB to other last names.

And I'd love to see WT move away from using LNAB as the profile identifier. It depends on user input, which is not ideal and often not correct.