Bug or feature?

Question

When entering children, I had one child with the wrong surname. After watching what was happening I noticed that when I add a child to a mother, it gives the child the mother's surname rather than thge father's, even when the father is checked. When that happened, I went in and changed the child's birth name to the father's, buyt then it added the mother's to the also field. When I deleted that is said the alternate name was anonymous so I had to actually add the father's name as the current name.

I wanted to just delete the child and start over, but couldn't find a way to do that. Surely I'm overlooking something obvious.

Now I know. NEVER add a child from the mother witrhout checking the birth surname. Better, ALWAYS add a child from the father. LOL.

Comments

I went through this same process early on in entering my lines on WT.

There is a bit of a learning curve here, but it is VERY intuitive, very friendly, and very forgiving.  And the ease of use is phenomenal.

Answer 1

Just an opinion, you understand:

As a fellow user here, I've made the same observation, but cannot think this is a flaw.

The reasoning?  Many children, past and present, are born with the mother's surname as their own.  If you enter from the mother's profile, you can merely supply the appropriate surname.  If you don't do so, the program will default with the mother's surname.

 

Keith Baker

Comments

True, but this is generally the exception rather than the rule in genealogy. It would be better to use the father's name if it is checked and have the user change to the mother's name in the cases you mentioned. Now that I know, I can deal with it, but it certainly isn't intuitive.

Answer 2

Hi Jim,

Do you have the mother's married name as her current name? If I only have her birth surname filled out, it automatically gives any child added from her profile that name for a surname. If the field for her current/married last name is filled out, it grabs that surname for the child. Of course, if she's had multiple spouses or used her birth name after having children, you'll still have to double check things.

Erin

Comments

Good point and one I'll have to look into. Most genealogy programs automatically append the married name, so it wasn't something I was looking at. Thanks for the heads up.

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Exactly right, Erin. Thanks! It's the difference between the Current Last Name and Last Name at Birth. Some users don't enter a Current Last Name, or their GEDCOM didn't contain them, so it can be confusing.