have you established your defanition of a surname?

Question

Has WikiTree, established a deffinition of "surname" and is it prepared to deal with paronimic naming systems or with families that do not have a last name? My GEDCOM will include ancestores that go into BC. are you prepared for this?

Comments

You might try to create a few profiles by hand at first to become acustomed to the Wikitree.  And after that you might try a very small GEDCOM of maybe 10 - 25 persons.  Almost everyone that is serious and has also started with a GEDCOM is often on here with comments that they wish they would have just done their profiles manually.

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"My GEDCOM will include ancestores that go into BC."

As in Before Christ?

I'd be curious to see the sources.

Answer 1

Hi Wilben,

Welcome to WikiTree!

Here are a couple help pages you might want to start with:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Profiles_BCE

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:GEDCOMs

Answer 2

Hello Wilben,

Most of 'your' early ancestry is already in WikiTree (they our also our ancestors) and you should not create any duplicates of them.

Find early ancestors in WikiTree and then add descendants (not already there) until you get to yourself.

Sincerely, Peter

Comments

The suggestion is sound, however: mathamatics kill it. This would work easily with a small tree that did not span a great period of time. My trree goes back to BC (with at least one weak link). Many people hva tracked their ancestry to the Roman Empire, and when that is accomplished much of the Roman history is well recorded and takes you back to BC. If you were to begine at that point and went forward the number of decendants will be astonomical. Millions if not a billion. I can carry six glasses in one hand to the dishwasher, but I would need help with twelve, twent four , or fourty eight

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Hello Wilben,

WikiTree is not designed to include BC.  I don't recommend a large GEDCOM.

Sincerely, Peter

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Hi Wilben,

Eowyn is the gedcom expert and the links she provided lead to valuable information.

I also agree with what Peter says.  His suggestion to enter working back to yourself is sound.  He is not saying enter every offspring ever, just your line back to you.  It's the same amount of profiles as working backwards from yourself in a straight line.

You will not need to enter profiles back to BC.  They are almost certainly already represented on WikiTree.  In fact, many of "your" ancestors who were born before 1700 are likely represented.

If you upload your gedcom it will suggest some matches for you and help you decide which ones can be skipped (because they are already here) and which ones you can import as a new profile.

That said... if you are going to upload a gedcom, start small. The suggestion is to start with less than 50 people for your first upload.  It's a very managable number that would allow you to see how it all works and to decide if it is better to upload more gedcoms or to enter the profiles manually.  Most people feel manual is best.

I hope this helps :)