Simple guideline improvement, please

Question

Could the guidelines for Proper First Name be slightly altered to explicitly address the use of the latin form of First Names?

I know it says "use their own language" and the discussions on G2G seem to agree on the interpretation. However, it would make work a lot easier if the subject was addressed directly.

The Germany Project has a pretty straight forward short paragraph in their guidelines, but if you cross "borders" it appears to be a matter of discussion.

That complicates profiles, the search and in the end collaboration. One simple direct sentence without room for interpretation that one can use as citation would be perfect.

This is not about repeating the previous discussions or my own personal opinion. It would just be great to have it clear. And I know I'm not the only one who would appreciate that.

Any chance?

Comments

Good suggestion, Christiane. But it would clarify things if you would like to give an example of what the sentence might say. Your example doesn't have to be the right policy answer, just something to give an idea of what might be required (maybe based on what the German project has).

The general guideline is at this link.

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Maybe something like this, combined from 2 paragraphs of the Germany Project?

Enter names in the language used by the person. Do not enter the Latin forms of names in data fields. It might be useful, however, to include the Latin form in the biography section.

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Thanks, Christiane. I hope other people will comment, but that sounds good to me. It is in keeping with "use their conventions": the names should be what the people called themselves, not church Latin.

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Thanks a lot, Jim.

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How do we know that a long-deceased ancestor didn't use his/her Latin-form name? We should recognize that possibility, not dismiss it completely.

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You are right that at various periods in monasteries for example people may have spoken Latin day to day and referred to each other by names in Latin; in that case Latin names in WikiTree fields would be appropriate.

But according to Wikipedia, for what that's worth,

Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the postclassical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed.

This seems to imply that during the medieval period Latin was not a spoken language. In that case, people would have instead have spoken local languages, and most likely used names in those languages, not Latin. It would be hard to provide a source to say otherwise, because surviving sources are necessarily in writing therefore not informative about spoken language.

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That a person may not have spoken Latin in daily conversation doesn't mean that he/she didn't use his/her Latin-form name. At least, we should not presume a person's usage preferences based solely on generalized local conventions.

In my opinion, we should follow our documentation before we apply local conventions. How have we sourced local conventions, anyway?

My perception is that we have a lot of presumptions and modern biases in our "their convention" guidelines. We need to guard against presuming how, or even if, our ancestors observed local conventions.

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In England I haven't  seen any evidence of latin  baptismal names being used outside the parish register. Only some clerics used latin and whether the entries are in latin is entirely dependent upon the whims of the cleric at the time. 

 There are numerous wills, chancery  records, land transfers, and  lists of names  covering all parts of the country and all classes. By the time parish registers had to be kept ( 1538) many  were in English . There are Tudor milita and lay subsidy lists, the 1642 protestation return which is the closest thing we have to an early 17th C male census. You can compare the names in a parish register in a place like Gillingham, Dorset (in Latin in the late 16th early 17th C )  with the men living there in the 1642 returns. ) images online at Parliamentary Archives) All the names on the return are written in plain English.

Answer 1

In the Netherlands the Latin names were used by the Catholics. Your official first names are the latin ones and next to that you have a "roepnaam" or call name. But on official papers the latin names are mentioned. So for the Netherlands I would like to keep the latin baptism names as the official first names.

Answer 2

I think this is over simplified.

Before X time in most European countries and probably in many other countries that I am not familiar with, the only birth related records were baptism or equivalent naming ceremonies. The ordinary people were illiterate.

We have no idea what names were used by family members, friends or neighbours. Many times we probably don't know exactly what language the local people used. There were in many locations local dialects, the records were not written in those dialects, they were written in the language used by the only literate people, the church officials.

For most people prior to required government records the only times their names appeared are in written church or religious records, baptism, marriage and burials.  

I have a good friend who was born in Holland, the first name on his baptismal record is Lambertus. In high school his friends called him Bert, his mother called him Lambert. His sister called him Lamie.

Another friend has the same official first name as his father, some of his uncles and several cousins, they all have Wayne as a first name.

He decided it was too complicated to use Wayne as his usual first name, he decided to use his second name Steven.  

In high school he got called Slash, as the name he used was written on school documents as Wayne/Steve.

If I look for records for Steven, with his last name I won't find any, and I certainly won't find any records for Slash.

Whether we like it or not, records use the name used on other records, not what other people may have called the person.

Comments

If Lambert's mother called him Lambert, his name was Lambert, not the Latin form used by a priest or official on his baptism record.

The complicated one should be First name: Wayne; Middle Name: Steven; Preferred name: Steve; Nickname: Slash. Stephanus doesn't come into it, let alone Wainus :-)

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That is an example for today when there are multiple written records. The exact same scenario could have happened at any time before literacy was common.

We can't ignore the fact that what was written by the people who could write are often the only records.

Using names that are not recorded and have no sources is not good genealogy.

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I think it's pretty clear that when a country's langauge is English, and only the cleric spoke and wrote in Latin, the names should be English form, not Latin.
Same, really for names rendered in Latin form by priests in places such as Ireland, where the day to day language spoken was NOT Latin.  
Just because a priest, or other cleric wrote in Latin does not make the Latin form of a name the correct one.  It simply makes it the preist's or cleric's way of rendering it.

Likewise, if a family spoke Sanskrit, or Urdu, or Hindi, but the names were written by English clerks in English, it does not make the English form correct.

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[Edited to add that the bold below is my emphasis; it does not appear in the original.]

Mm... I'm loathe to disagree with either Jim or Melanie but the help page is pretty clear.

About Proper First Name it says: "This is the formal given name that would appear in official documents."  

The Preferred First Name instructions are not written as clearly but include the phrase "what they prefer to be called,"

In that case, Proper first name would be "Lambertus" and Preferred first name would be "Lambert".

Nickname would be "Bert, Lamie"

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My main concern was to avoid exactly this cross-pinpointing. Simplified: Use their conventions vs Use first document.

My suggestion was based on the conclusion from prior discussions and the guideline "use their conventions". But obviously the overall approach seems still controversial.

I personally agree with Jim and Melanie.

In my "perfect little world" the solution could be: Use rule A unless your project advices rule B, implying that a consensus for rule A is/can be found and specified in the guidelines.

I hope to read some more opinions.

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I was just reading another thread in the Policy section (about "dit" names in French Canada) and came across this 2015 post from Helmut that helps me appreciate the complexity of the problem:

"I think that with a lot of naming issues we run into a conflict of goals for WikiTree: One goal is "(w)e aim to use the names that people themselves would have known and that would have been recognized in their own time and place." (From the style guide "General Naming Conventions".) The other goal is to avoid duplications, and this second goal beats out the first for many people as witnessed by some awkward profiles that have been cobbled together, not reflecting any name the people in the profile would ever have been known by, but wonderfully searchable from a modern, anglo-american perspective. It would not be a problem if everybody would look at a primary source when creating a profile but that is not the case, especially with French Canadian names. Most of us rely on secondary sources and those, whether they be Tanguay, Jetté, or the PRDH, all have standardized the names according to their time period and priorities, discarding the names used in the primary source.

"This is not a French Canadian problem alone as recent discussions about Spanisch or scandinavian names have shown. I don't think we will be able to solve it until we discuss a revamping of profile and edit pages that would make them more accomodating to other cultures. I do understand the reluctance to touch these issues from a programming point of view, but may be there could be a way found to separate the profile presentation from the search function without having to change too much else. I'm thinking something along the line of a separate name field for search parameters on the edit window that would not show on the profile page. It would free up LNAB and CLN to reflect the names people were really going by, and the Other Name Field for true aliases, and one could put anything that should be checked for possible duplicates in a field that would not clutter the profile."

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Good find, Jillaine. Helmut made subtle and interesting points.

Earlier you cited (there is no bold in the original)

Proper First Name: "This is the formal given name that would appear in official documents."

Note it says "would appear", not "did appear".

I prefer to interpret "would" in the sense "would appear if the conventions of the people being named were respected." I reject the power of church or state authorities, past or present, to force names onto people contrary to their own wishes and usage.

In any case, the content of the current Help page is not the last word, because Christiane is proposing (or working towards) a policy change to amend it.

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I appreciate and respect the stance to reject the power of authorities over individual or family preferences, but sound genealogical research depends on records and documentation (whoever they were created by). 

You've pointed out and illustrated that Wikitree's use of "would" results in wildly different interpretations. That's problematic for me, and I'd prefer that WikiTree's help text be less open to interpretation to avoid conflicts such as we're seeing here (and in many other places throughout WikiTree). So I would prefer that the text simply say:

Proper First Name: "This is the formal given name that appears in official documents."

(Yes, I'm disagreeing with the OP's original proposal.)

This thread is also surfacing that the way field names are worded is also too open to interpretation. For example, I interpret "Proper" as "documented" because I approach wikitree from a genealogical research frame where documentation is expected and considered sound practice. But to someone else, "Proper" might mean "what was proper to the family."

But the naming of fields is a different proposal and a different g2g thread.

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I see "proper" as being the name my parents gave me, not whatever some cleric recorded.

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Melanie proves my point. The field names are too open to interpretation.

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It also differs from short form names, or nicknames - hence "proper".

Answer 3

The big question is not how to enter relatively recent names on a profile.

The big question is how far back does this proposition go?

The example given by Jim is medieval times. Those of us who research pre-1600, and many times pre 1700 family history are well aware that written records for anyone who was not a somewhat important person are few and far between.

What sources are available if any that provide names other than what was recorded at that time by the local scribe? Whether that person was a member of the clergy or another person who was more educated or literate than the general population.

There are many examples on Canadian censuses of people who are illiterate, under the column that says 'can read and write' check yes or no", Or on some others that say can read but not write or vice versa.

And many of us know that the enumerator wrote down the person's name how the enumerator thought the name was spelt. It's how we get all those annoying alternate names.

I am not questioning the 'use their conventions not ours'.

What I am concerned about is making our conventions ' their conventions'. If we feel that a name of a person or place is not being used as we may think it should.

We have to have an alternate source.

Comments

The guidelines for the Medieval Project now rule out using Latin names. See Michael's comment elsewhere in this thread.

Answer 4

So what could be the next step?

It would be an advantage to find some agreement on the use of latin first names in Proper First Name fields in times when usually only church books etc. were available (Pre-1500 is a whole other matter I think) and to have that embedded in the guidelines, right? (not talking about exeptions but the general approach)

How can we proceed here?

Comments

Christiane, I'm sorry that a consensus hasn't appeared here.

There seems to be a division between people who think that a name in Latin should be used on WikiTree because it appeared in a written church baptism or funeral record, and others who feel that non-vernacular names that were never used except ceremonially at the start or end of life do not meet the criterion of "using their conventions".

It's hard to see a way forward.

The formal method for proposing a style rule change is described here:

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

But that says "Highly controversial rules are not usually implemented." So at present I'm afraid it's not easy to think that the process would be successful.

As I support your idea myself, I find this disappointing.

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There is in fact a clear existing policy set out by some Projects of not using Latin for medieval profiles. The EuroAristo Project developed detailed guidelines on name fields. It requires people to use the "first name at birth, in the person's native language". That is interpreted for medieval profiles with a degree of flexibility - using the first name of William the Conqueror as it may have appeared in the Norman French of his time might not be helpful, and he has been given the proper first name Guillaume (and preferred name William), just as attempting to use Frankish or Neustrian forms for the names of Charlemagne would be likely to cause difficulty.

The official naming guidance of the Medieval Project states that "We use the native language of the person within reason."

I have just added a more explicit instruction in the Magna Carta project naming standards not to use Latin forms in name fields.

Latin forms can be mentioned, if this is helpful, in the main text of the bio.

If Latin forms are used in the proper first name field, they may well get changed.

Much the same goes for Last Name at Birth and Current Last Name. For, say, medieval English Beachamp profiles, it may be that the only contemporary records for someone give the Latin form of the name - de Bello Campo - but we use Beauchamp.

[corrected for typos]

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Thank you, Michael. This is important and helpful.

Does it offer a way towards a proposal which would culminate in the insertion of wording along the lines Christiane suggested, with any appropriate modifications, into the Help page section on Proper First Names and covering more recent periods?

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Thank you, Michael. This is really helpful.

Jim, my suggestion was based off what I thought to be the consensus of previous discussions plus the paragraph about using their conventions.

I do share your opinion but in the end I´m fine with any improvement that can be made to specify the guidelines.

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The Medieval Project has now followed the Magna Carta Project in making more explicit the guidance not to use Latin for the Proper First Name, Last Name at Birth and Current Last Name fields.

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Thank you again, Michael. See

• EuroAristo: Proper first name "is first name at birth, in the person’s native language."
• Magna Carta: "Do not use Latin forms for proper first name, last name at birth or current last name, even if they appear in records."
• Medieval: ditto.

Christiane: maybe a style rule change proposal could be formulated, citing the above as precedents, and arguing for consistency. However, given the degree of resistance shown (incorrectly, in my view), the success of such a proposal would not be assured.

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I don't think I am able to phrase a proposal correctly, at least not in my current mind condition (sometimes words are hard to find in my mother tongue let alone in any other language). But in the meantime it's good to gather information on the approach of individual projects towards the subject.

To add to the list above:

Germany Project: Enter names in the language used by the person. Do not enter the Latin forms of names in data fields

Thanks for all your opinions, help and support. Maybe some more projects will have a look into this subject...

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Good thinking about gathering more information, Christiane. The Germany Project guideline you mention is here.

There is a useful list of name field guidelines for many projects at this link. I found a couple more of interest:

Czech LNAB: "Use no Latin names even if the records were written in Latin (using –in.)"

Italy: "The Italy project, like many other nation-based projects, aims to use the name people were born with and the names that person would have likely used during their lifetime."