I can't get the profile to show their middle name was what they went by.

Question

I'm trying to post profiles where all of my aunts and uncles went by their proper middle names.  If I put their preferred names in then the middle initial duplicates.  I want all 3 names to show on the public profile with their middle names in parenthesis because that's what they went by.  It's not a nickname.

Comments

Hi Annette.  I also have many ancestors whose middle name was the preferred name.  This has been a recurring complaint over at least four or five years.  At one time I thought it had been fixed once and for all, but then it rears its head again.  FWIW, if you go to a profile and click on the Profile ID in the menu at the top right of the screen, and then click on Name Displays, the page will show you how the name should be displaying in various views on the site.  It's not the same for every view, and it may depend on the privacy setting as well.  It won't necessarily solve the problem, but sometimes it may give you a clue as to why you're not seeing what you expect to see.

Answer 1

Annette, if you put first name and middle name (or middle initial) all in the Proper First Name, put middle name in Preferred Name, and leave Middle Name blank, I believe the name will be displayed the way you want.

This will affect searches, though.  If someone enters only the first name in the first name field for a search, then this profile will not show up on the "hit" list.

Comments

I agree with Gaile. Except I'm pleased to report that she's wrong about the effect on search. If a person enters only the first name in the first name field for a search, the profile will appear in the results list. (I just now tested this to verify...)

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Thanks, Ellen Smith, for checking the way it appears in searches. I'm thinking of changing some of my ancestors' names to show the way they were known to people but wouldn't want to mess up searching for them.

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Does this mean for all my Mary Anne’s I can put the Ann into the first name field instead of splitting it so the Ann goes into the middle name field? It brings up an error when I did that so I thought they had to be split. They were known as Mary Ann.

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Use judgment. If the person's given name was Mary Ann or Joe Bob or Sara Ellen or Johann Adam, or erc.,  and you think that's the name they used, put that whole name in the First Name field and ignore the message about middle names.  The middle name message exists mostly because of genealogy software that doesn't  distinguish middle names.