What is the standard for using different but accurate names for birth and death locations?

Question

Just got notice of a new profile entered by someone in Europe and they used their local (Slovakian) name for the United States in their locations when they listed someone who was born and died in the United States.

In their language, the name IS the United States of America, but it has to throw off some of the searchers who are expected USA or United States, even if the names of the towns/cities are correct.

Any Ideas?

Answer 1

If you blindly accept the location suggestions, that are provided by FamilySearch, the language of your computer is used. So this means that someone with Slovakian as their computer language will see 'Spojené Státy americké' while someone with English as their computer language will see 'United States'.

This also causes errors the other way around. Someone from the USA or UK will see 'Slovakia' instead of 'Slovensko' and enter the country name erroneously in English instead of Slovakian.

Comments

That seems to be what happened - I just added USA and put the Slovakian name for the US in parens.

I've had some experience with Czech names and they have various letter combinations using the latin alphabet that could also transliterate to pronouncing the name, "Stetson," as well.

Is "Cecin" a Slovak name? Or would they spell it differently.

The first 3 Stetson Kindred's books don't have a Ignatz Stetson in in the family, but maybe the entire Stetson line began in Eastern Europe....

---

I think it's also to do with language skills  and pragmatism. English is my mother tongue, I can read French so would probably have no problem entering place names in that language. Elsewhere becomes more problematic.

I have created  profiles for a whole set of siblings including my husband's granny  born, in the 19th Century, in Kobe Japan. (father was a British trader working there)   I wouldn't know  how to enter the location in the Japanese of the period . If I could, no relatives could read it.

It isn't any different to a person from Slovakia entering  locations in his or her own language.