Are you meant to enter a womens married name if they are married

Question

(Note this is a UK perspective)

Peoples wikitree id is base don their birth surname which makes perfect sense. If they marry nothing chnages which also make sense. But there is also a married lastname field and if this is entered their display name goes from

forenames birthsurname

to

forename (birthsurname) marriedsurname

which I find confusing as I think of them by their birth surname.

Is it expected that we use the married surname field or is in entirely discretionary.

Answer 1

It's their current last name, not only a married name. If you don't use this they won't show up in some of the lists with their husband. I relay on them showing up with their husband.

Comments

Thanks whats list do you mean ?

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e.g. I put in "Aberdeen" in the last name box at the top of the page. This gives a list of everyone with the last name at birth of Aberdeen. Sorting the list by name (or even date of birth) brings up a number of other options for this list.

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ABERDEEN tools for Wiki Genealogists: find matches | follow activity | G2G activity | include people with current last name | limit to Watchlist | merging and matching options | pending merges | orphaned | unconnected | unsourced | recent activity

The "include people with current last name" brings in anyone whose current last name is Aberdeen but last name at birth isn't. You can limit this to people in your watch list, look for orphaned or unconnected people, check for matches, etc.

All very useful functions.

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But does that mean if I only want to search for people whose birth surname is Aberdeen I cant because it will now also shows those whose married name is Aberdeen.

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No, you can reverse the current last name back to back to only people whose last name is Aberdeen. Most of those menu items allow you to swap back and forth. If you only want your Watch list, click on "limit to Watch List" afterwards the menu changes so that you can see all of the Aberdeen's. Look on these commands as filters which are able to be turned on or off.

Pick a surname of your own and play with it a bit. These commands only show up if you sort by name or birth date first.