Change the default when adding a husband?

Question

When I enter a husband the "Presnt Marrid Name" field takes the family name from the wife.  This is sufficiently uncommon that it should be changed,

Answer 1

Hi Theodore,

Someone else had mentioned this once and I didn't get it. Why would it be uncommon for a woman's married name to match her husband's current last name? You'd think it would be common enough that having the auto-fill would be marginally useful.

Now I see it. So many genealogists, at least for deep genealogy, ignore the married name altogether. If there was a GEDCOM import, chances are good that a woman's Current Last Name and Last Name at Birth fields on WikiTree are the same. Plus, even if you're planning to add a married name as the Current Last Name, you might not have done it at the time that you're adding the husband.

You're probably, Theodore, we should disable that.

Anybody else have input on this?

Chris

Comments

What I think he means is that if you add a wife to a man, the woman automatically gets the LNAB of the man as Current Last Name (this is common), but the other way around works too. If you add a husband to a woman, the man automatically receives the womans LNAB as Current Last Name (which is not very common).

Am I right Theodore?

Sincerely,
Martyn

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Martyn, it actually does insert the woman's CLN for her husband's last name, not her LNAB. The problem is that her CLN is often not filled-in and simply duplicates her LNAB.

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A woman getting the last name at birth of her husband is not so common as you think, probably more countries do not allow or accept this than do. It is becoming common in some counties where name changing is illegal to allow the wife to add her husbands name to hers for daily use but her legal names stays as it was at birth.