Should labels "Proper" and "Preferred" first names be changed?

Question

I very frequently encounter situations where people immigrated (in my case, almost always from Lithuania or Hungary to the United States) and "Americanized" their names afterward.  The LNAB (Last Name At Birth) and CLN (Current Last Name) fields serve this situation well, but first names are a problem.

Until now, I have been entering the original first name in the Proper First Name field and the changed one in the Preferred First Name field, but this does not correctly depict the reality.

I would like to propose that we change the names of these fields to "First Name at Birth" and "Current First Name", respectively, to better reflect the reality of a person using a different first name later in life than the one assigned at birth.

EDITED TO ADD:  I don't believe this would negatively impact other name situations using these fields; in fact, it might be equally appropriate for them, too.

Comments

While I am not a fan of the current labels for the various name fields, I would not support changing the labels for these fields to positional words either.

To me, Proper/Preferred are judgement calls, while positional labels are a not universally recognized format.

I feel we need labels that identify a person's various given names by their purposes: christening/baptism names; names used in documents; stage names/aliases; etc.

Expanding this concept to both given names and surnames, we have names to identify the individual (given names, nicknames, etc.) and names to identify the individual's family or extended group (surnames, patronyms/matronyms, tribes/clans, etc.).

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If you want to relabel the fields, pretty please with a cherry on top get rid of the positional terms while you're at it: they're not first names, they're given names. (And yeah, they're not last names, either.)

But given the wide variety of naming customs around the world, and the equally wide variety of reasons a person may have used different names, I don't see much point to relabeling the fields. It's lipstick on the pig.

Answer 1

I understand your approach. And in cases of migration and change the name into the target language it would be useful.

But … In Germany you officially may give your child up to four first names. In noble circles they often give inofficially even more than four first names.

In former times the calling name was underlined.

First example: [[Barnscheidt-2]]

My 2-g-grandfather was Johann Heinrich Gustav Barnscheidt. His older brother was Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Barnscheidt. Their father was Johann Heinrich Barnscheidt. such a constellation is not uncommon in old German families.

So my ancester was the Gustav and his brother was the Wilhelm in the normal day family life.

The current fields
Proper First Name: Johann Heinrich Gustav
Preferred Name: Gustav

show the correct situation.

In the profile is correctly shown: Johann Heinrich Gustav (Gustav) Barnscheidt

So if you rename Proper First Name to First Name at Birth and Preferred Name to Current Last Name: It would not be 100% correct. 

Second example: [[Grossteinbeck-1]]

Johann Adolph Grossteinbeck was born in Germany and emigrated to the nowadays USA. He americanized his name to John Steinbeck.

His names are entered as you mentioned. But the display on the profile page is not quite correct.

It shows: Johann Adolph (John) Steinbeck formerly Grossteinbeck

He was never Johann Adolph Steinbeck.

Correct would be: John Steinbeck formerly Johann Adolph Grossteinbeck

So it wouldn't be done with renaming the fields. There would something more be needed for complete name change.

Answer 2

Sorry Gaile, but I think there are many cases, different to the ones you signal, and in addition to those described by Siegfried, for which this change would be undesirable.

A man called John at birth may have been known as Jack informally, but his name on official documents and perhaps his signature would still have had John. His "current first name" was John, not Jack. "Preferred name" correctly indicates the informal variant. (It is different from a nickname, which is an even less formal, possibly quirky, appellation, for example "Frank the Tank", to use the example on the Help page.)

Comments

I agree I use the preferred name to record the name they used in day to day life, but they still would use the official version on official documents, so it’s useful to know both names they used when trying to find records.