Junior and Senior

Question

If you have someone called for example, "Bob Sam Jones", and he has a son called "Bob Sam Jones", do you add Jr on the end of the younger one, and Sr on the end of the older one?

No one can be born a Sr, and yet I've seen this around. Am I doing this wrong? I've been putting whatever their name is on the birth certificate.

Answer 1

On the son of Bob Sam Jones (the 1st) to differentiate the dfference between the identical names, the son should have the suffix of Jr. behind his name.

Answer 2

Kirsty -

You are correct that Sr. shouldn't be on a profile since no one is named that at birth.  As for automatically adding Jr. or II to a profile just to differentiate, you really want to go with what the person was named at birth.  It's never a problem to add a note in the bio section to clarify if the name fields don't provide a way due to odd naming.

Comments

Is there something written in the help files about this? I've just had 2 different answers LOL

I was thinking really I should just be going with whatever is on the birth cert - but wondered what others did. Is there a standard?

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Kirsty -

You can find the info on all name fields in the Help section, but specifically for the Suffix field at http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields#Suffix.  Thanks for asking!  The quality of our tree depends on conscientious folks like yourself!

-Allen

Answer 3

In my view Jr and Sr should be used if they were a recognised part of the name by the family concerned. If not, they should definitely not be introduced.

I suppose that's the third answer - the middle way.

Comments

I agree. A person will not have senior on their birth record obviously but in later research, if the senior designation shows up in census, public records index or death, then it should be added to the profile.  It helps differentiate the profiles for matches and merges as well.

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Agreed, but not in the suffix field.  If folks are relying on name fields alone in order to determine whether profiles should be merged, then there are a LOT of bad merges going on.  We should all be checking dates, spouses, parents, children, and bio information when doing merges.  If only the contents of the name fields are considered, then a lot of clues can and will be missed.

 

From http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields#Suffix:

"Preferably, this should only be used for the Suffix at Birth."