cape of good hope - not found

Question

The 'policy' is that location of birth or death are formulated using the words from the time of birth or death.

.. however, this is not always unique, e.g: 'Cape of Good Hope', 'Kaap de Goede Hoop', 'Cabo de Goede Hoop', 'Caep de Goede Hoop', etc.

I'm noticing that it is impossible to simply search for people with a relatively common name that were from what is now 'South Africa'.  If I demand any location in the search, this often results in nothing being found.

This seems like a problem.  How to avoid it?

I'm often adding 'South Africa' to the old colony/province names, hoping that it would match a search asking for locations in the modern South Africa.

Is that the correct approach?

I'm also noticing that others, more puritanical in their period-naming, are deleting my 'South Africa', because no 'South Africa' existed in those times.

Feature request: can the search mechanisms of wikitree become clever enough to group all of these naming schemes, and accept any of them?  Is there a place where we can help define all the historical name-variants that should be treated as equivalent in searches? This would naturally fall to country/area projects.. if such equivalence-classes of location names can be supported.

Or do we need to do something by e.g. adding 'south africa' to whatever historical location names?

Comments

Location Field Style Guide

Applied to locations, this means using place names in native languages and using the names that people at the time used, even if they now no longer exist.  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#:~:text=Our%20guiding%20principle%20for%20location,their%20conventions%20instead%20of%20ours.%22

Unfortunately an error report will be generated and it is when this reports are cleared that you will get a message explaining why the words South Africa was removed

The only place names for the Cape of Good Hope project that will not generate such a report is 

1652-04-06 – 1795-09-16 de Caep de Goede Hoop/Cabo de Goede Hoop 1795-09-17-1803-02-20 Cape of Good Hope Colony 1803-02-21-1806-01-18 Cabo de Goede Hoop

Unfortunately not all members use these recommendations but if used correctly it narrows down the search  significantly

Maybe this will also help

Have you tried to find the surname under categories 

The categorie placed under a certain place (ie Drakenstein) will give you an alphabetical  list for surnames   see  example  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Drakenstein_District%2C_Dutch_Cape_Colony

 Wikitree's recommendations are used in the COGH project  regarding placenames and Granted it is a more  tedious way of searching  but the only  solution I can offer..

Maybe someone else has a better solution ? 

 

 

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Further search outside WikiTree as recomended under item 4 

Search for Any Text

 on the WikiTree search page  (second last option at the bottom of the page )

 

 

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which search string do you use?

Is the following effective to reduce the number of hits for e.g. somebody called "John Jackson":

'Caap Caep Kaap Cabo Cape'

The search suggests that these ear keywords.. so the search should then accept any of the words matching.. but if I try, it doesn't seem to work.

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Hi NC

  I search for a surname and place in the general search on Wikitree with Smit  (Cape Colony in the birth location)  first

Then the google search

 I have never tried it without a surname  or a general search first

My search link

  https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-5983849578006601%3A2801067696&ie=UTF-8&textSearchType=on&q=+cape+colony&sa=Go#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=%20cape%20colony&gsc.page=10

Answer 1

I can relate to the frustrations. If it was possible to split the political establishment from the geographical place names, we could get somewhere. Born in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, married in the Transvaal Colony and died in the Transvaal, Union of South Africa - all done and sealed in Pretoria- is the political environment. We can do all this in Pretoria, South Africa... if separated from the political. establishment. (Maybe we will have to add "Republic of South Africa" in the present time!)

Answer 2

What is puritanical in simple words?

Strict, straight laced, and unsmiling, someone who is puritanical follows moral or religious rules to the letter. Describing someone as puritanical is usually a bit of a criticism, since the word implies that the person is not just religious, but overly rigid in his or her beliefs and not a lot of fun to be around.

Answer 3

Yes, I truly wish the Geography Police will go away.

Like you, I have noticed that many "correct" South African place names will cause searches to fail. Also, the drop-down facility that is supposed to help you select correct place names is totally dysfunctional.

I might observe that all records from the Western Cape Archives in Cape Town and the NGK Archives in Stellenbosch are filed by the LDS under "Cape Province, South Africa". Even those before 1700, never mind 1910. Searching for some made-up place like "Dutch Cape Colony" will get you nothing. And, please don't get me started on the Germany vs. Holy Roman Empire topic!

It would actually be useful, I think, if those who wish to do geography rather than genealogy would make a table that cross-references place names by date. And then make the place drop-down function minimally intelligent by having it look at the date (of birth, for example) when it suggests alternate place names.

My Meintjes ancestors were trekboers, it seems, from day one. The progenitor was in the Koue Bokkeveld (Ceres), his children in the Roggeveld (Sutherland) and then the Agter Sneeuberg long before 1800. The place was Rietvallei, which is the west bank of the Fish River at Cradock. It is interesting to read accounts of how they "moved" from Stellenbosch to Paarl, Tulbach (not Tulbagh), Roodezand,  then Graaff-Reinet (and perhaps Swellendam). Those places are the parishes where their baptisms and marriages were recorded, not the places where they were living.

Keith

Comments

See South Africa Country Naming. Australia makes an interesting contrast.

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Keith It would actually be useful, I think, if those who wish to do geography rather than genealogy would make a table that cross-references place names by date. The Home pages of both the Cape of Good Hope and South African Roots have  such a list 

And then make the place drop-down function minimally intelligent by having it look at the date (of birth, for example) when it suggests alternate place names. 

The drop down place name are not generated by WikiTree but by Family Search 

 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#:~:text=Our%20guiding%20principle%20for%20location,their%20conventions%20instead%20of%20ours.%22

 

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> The drop down place name are not generated by WikiTree but by Family Search 

So what? They are provided to me in WikiTree. They still do nothing to help the user follow the place naming guidelines.

> https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#:~:text=Our%20guiding%20principle%20for%20location,their%20conventions%20instead%20of%20ours.%22

This simply says we should use names as used by the people at that time and place. That is fine. I do though resent being told that "Cape Colony, South Africa" is incorrect when I have done it exactly so because a search that does not include "South Africa" will fail.

Answer 4

In my opinion there should be a place name for the database, whatever that may be, and then the politically correct name can be added to the biography.  That way it wouldn't impinge on the search facility.

Answer 5

While NC Brummer's question relates more to the less than ideal situation w.r.t. search for South African places, I want to address the following statement by Keith:

the drop-down facility that is supposed to help you select correct place names is totally dysfunctional.

Ian Beacall has made great improvements to that drop-down function with corrections of certain names, colour-coding and sorting (e.g. moving names for the wrong time-period to the end of the list) as part of the WBE. (See the Locations Helper option under the EDIT section of the WBE options).  I have now built on Ian's excellent work and added functionality that will ensure that the South African "regions" (for lack of a better word) or provinces are correctly named depending on the date involved.  This functionality is now in the latest Preview version of the WBE, so check it out.

The important thing is to first fill in the date before starting to type the corresponding location. We still make use of the list of suggestions obtained from FamilySearch, but any "wrong" location name" for the time period, i.e. not according to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:South_African_Roots/Sources2), will be corrected. So, for example, "Transvaal, South Africa" will be changed to "Zuid-Afrikaansche Republic" if the date is between 1852 and 1902 and similar for the other provinces. Unfortunately nothing is being done about all those highly unlikely places like all the Stellenbosch locations all over the country (are there really that many farms called Stellenbosch all over the country?? ), nor have I taken into account "The small areas that became part of the 4 provinces" and I have also ignored the homelands.

Please try it and let me know if you find any issues.

Comments

Thank you Riel for all you do to improve our experience on WikiTree

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My humble opinion is as follows: If the Cape Colony or Kaapkolonie is not recognised as THE country, the problem will remain. There was no South Africa at the time. South Africa as a country did not exist. Yes it was in the Southern African Region GEOGRAPHICALLY. As long as South Africa is indexed as the country of Cape of Good Hope, any search under Cape Colony or Cape of Good hope will not be effective. Split search in two: Geografical search or "Staatkundig" or "political" establishment. mmmm... great to see that Netherlands and Afrikaans have a better word!

Piet

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Recognised as THE county where? If you enter Cape Colony in the birth or death location field on the search page, you will get Cape Colony profiles. Or what am I missing?

But you are right I did not try to solve the search issue - WikiTree has to do that. I only implemented something that would make it easier for people to adhere to the country naming standard set by the South African and Cape of Good Hope Projects. :)

Answer 6

I agree finding names for a place is harder because of that. I don't have a solution. Ideally we would have alternate names linked behind the scenes to make searches easier i.e. all historical names could link at a high level to South Africa for search purposes. What I do is to put the English Name (Cape of Good Hope) as an alternate name and the current name (South Africa) in square brackets in the biography so it can be found using full text searches and to indicate it as an alternate current location name.