Ps there a way to force the name used on a sricker?

Question

I'm working on a profile for the musical theater performer Florence Mills. Mills is a stage name, her birth name is Winfrey, married name Thompson. On her profile this comes out as Florence Thompson formerly Winfrey aka Mills, which is what we want. On the stickers it uses Florence (Winfrey) Thompson. which is not what we want. Can I force the stickers to use 'Florence Mills'?

Comments

I don't think there is any way to "force" the name display on those particular stickers.

I have made name additions to religion, and occupation stickers, however.

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That's a good idea Melanie, could use the occupational sticker instead.

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Well, for my one 3-greats-grandfather, who was a shoemaker (actually a cordwainer, like another of my x-greats), I used :

{{Occupation|image=Swedish_Profession_Templates-3.jpg|text=Crewe was a shoemaker.}}

The sticker code will auto-populate his first name, so it would show as "John was a shoemaker." - so I added his surname to make it look right to me.

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Dave, did you come to a conclusion on this? The name currently has Anonymous for preferred name which isn't correct and throws up a database error. Anonymous should only be used on living people's profiles.

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I  didn't know it was doing that and I don't know why it is doing that ... nothing I ever typed! I never used 'Anonymous' on that profile ... wait I have an idea (putting on my tech support hat) ...

Every time I tried to leave 'Preferred name' blank and save the system replaced it with 'Anonymous'. I entered 'Florence' (my idea from above) which stuck as preferred name (no longer replaced) BUT the sticker didn't update. So we have a technical issue. How do I let the IT folks know?

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Try re-adding the preferred name.  (I seem to recall some post on g2g where that was a solution for stickers and names.)

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That fixed it on the profile but not the sticker.

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I don't see a second edit to re-add Florence.

Try removing the sticker, then adding it back -- saving in between.

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I just looked again. It's good now. Not sure what changed. It hasn't been touched since my last edit. Back when I worked tech support when things worked out and I didn't know why I'd just take credit and say I knew it would work out all the time. So ...

I knew it would work all the time.

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Oh, pshaw.. I looked at it 6 times. THAT's what fixed it! 

It probably autocorrected when connections and everything else got caught up.

Answer 1

I am not familiar with the surname Sricker.

Answer 2

As Melanie eluded to, stickers typically use a profile function (parser function / magic word) to automatically include the names in the template as documented in the profile fields for First Name, Last Name at Birth, Current Last Name, Suffix, etc.

In the event a sticker has custom text options available, you can change the output some, but for others, the text is hard coded and cannot be tweaked. In this specific case, I think the template in question is the Notables Sticker, which is one of the stickers that does not accept custom text.

I would also argue that even though her stage name may be the most recognizable, most users may actually want to see the "real name" in associated templates (genealogy and all that).

Stage names could also be applied to Authors in a form (nom de plume / pen name / pseudonym) and could get very tricky in the long run (e.g., Dean Koontz is recognized to have at least ten (10) pen names). As long as the stage name is covered in the Bio and profile fields in some form, the profile can be found through internal and external searches.

Comments

But what about the "real name" for a married woman whose sticker for a pre-marriage event shows her married surname?

Example profile: Wetterling-8  ; she was not a Jones when she immigrated, so Jones should not be displayed in the immigration sticker.

We should have the ability to decide which name variation to show in each and every sticker. If we use the notables sticker, we should be able to display the name under which the person attained that notability. If an event occurred under one's birth surname, we should be able to display the birth surname without the current surname if it is different.

Stickers are designed to highlight specific events/status. The information relevant to that event/status should be displayed by the sticker, not irrelevant/less relevant information.

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Hi Lindy, while it is a valid point, I don't think we should be trying to decipher point in time names for stickers, which are first and foremost, just an accessory to a profile.

The way the sticker is currently displayed and presented makes sense from a genealogical standpoint in my mind. We are here (today), speaking of a woman known now as "Anna Jones, née Wetterling" who migrated to the United States in the 1870's and then married a David Jones. While I understand the surname Jones did not have any meaning or significance at that specific place in time, it does now to those reading the Bio.

However, I obviously do not speak for everyone - so if you would like to propose specific template changes (e.g., to a specific template) or global changes (e.g., to all templates that use names), then we have a mechanism for suggesting such changes through G2G (similar to how a rule change proposal would work).

My major concern is that changing existing templates that are in wide usage already could be very problematic from a technical standpoint if not handled very carefully.