Would it be less confusing if the maiden name was included for a daughter?

Question

I believe it would be much easier if profiles included the birth names of female children (and not just their married names).  For example John Doe's profile states he is the "Father of Sally Fields".  It would more helpful if instead it said "Father of Sally (Doe) Fields" -- or Sally Fields (Doe) or Sally Fields (nee Doe) .

In the process of buidling trees and merging, many times I've gotten very confused thinking I had put the wrong daughter with parents.

Thanks.

Comments

I agree Peter. One of the biggest challenges in my research has been trying to determine the maiden names for several of my most distant female ancestors. I really like the idea of showing both.

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Update: The Last Names at Birth and Current Last Names are now used in a more consistent way on profiles and edit pages.

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Excellent!

Answer 1

There have been several request for this, or something similar over the last few weeks. I agree wholeheartedly that the current method is confusing and timewasting as you backtrack to find what you have done wrong, then you find it is the inconsistence in naming people. It seems almost every view has a different naming strayegy. I would like one consistant method of displaying names, and it should contain the full birth name in every case.

Answer 2

I always felt that the current way of showing names of relatives made sense, since it tries to show the less obvious name. Eg. for kids you might know the birth names, so it shows you the married names to add more info; for parents and spouses it shows the birth names, because in those cases married names can often be guessed.

However, I do agree in principle with always showing the birth name, and with making name displays more consistent. So, I would support including the birth name in this case. Either just the birth name, which would be the same as the display of parents and spouses, or "Sally (Doe) Fields", in your example, would be fine with me.

Comments

For my families, in their cultural context, I very much like the showing of married names, as I can see at a glance which ones I have researched beyond their birth and it helps me determine which family line has stemmed from which ancestor.

 I am perfectly happy with maiden name shown as well but I hope the married surname remains.  Otherwise I would have to load the profile to remember who married whom - a slow business at some times of the day.

Showing maiden name would be useful where there is more than one husband, in determining at a glance which daughter was born to which.

Answer 3

It would be far less confusing if maiden names were always used for females. Believe it or not, this subject has been discussed a number of times at WikiTree.

Although WikiTree is wonderful and I'm so thankful Chris has made this site possible, the inconsistency in the way names are shown sometimes creates stumbling blocks. Displaying a woman's birth name every time would be very helpful. That way I'd know at a glance, for instance, that Sarah Williams was the daughter of John Williams and Sarah Sample was the dau-in-law. As it is, I see Sarah Williams and think she's the daughter when actually she's the dau-in-law and Sarah NewName is the daughter. If the two Sarah’s were in my close family line, there wouldn’t be so much confusion because I’d know them personally, but when they are distant kin it’s hard to keep them straight.

After decades of researching families, the consistent display in books, unpublished family histories, and over the internet has been:

Given name/s (Maiden Name) Married Name

Having said all this, the way names of females are shown has improved (in big part thanks to Jillaine :)) over the last year. Whether names are tweaked a bit more or not, WikiTree is still a great site and getting better all the time!