Best practices for "Other Last Name(s)"?

Question

Is there a recommendation or best practice for the Other Last Name(s): section?  

Should I go in and add the married last name of all the women in my tree?  Should I leave them as their maiden name and let the existence of a marriage imply a name change?  Add it in the Bio?  Do some complicated “nee” thing?

Is there a recommendation in the style guide that I missed?

Comments

Se help http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields#Other_Last_Names

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Ok, so I do need to go through all my profiles and add the married name to Current Last Name?  Ouch!

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I would, unless I knew that a person did not use her husbands name. You will hear some arguments from managers who don't like to put the married name in Current Last name, because it changes where and how the person is displayed on different pages and searches.

Answer 1

If you follow the link that Mangus provided it explains the best practice for names. I do not change the names of the profiles I manage unless there is some documented source that they were actually using their husbands name during their life or at the time of death. No one should force you to change all of the names right now, whenever you are editing them to bring them in line with the standards or when you are adding sources would be fine. From a genealogy standpoint as long as you have the name they were born with in the LNAB field, that is the most important.

Comments

If you put the husband's last name into Current Last Name that will increase the chances that someone searching for a married woman will find the right person and not create a duplicate.

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I do add the name, when there is sourced information that she used her husbands last name as per WikiTree guidelines for the CLN and Other names fields. But without sources that it was used then there is nothing other than guessing or trying to apply our personal standards to that person that could possibly be a reason for changing the name fields.