What do I do about using a foreign alphabet?

Question

The name in Norwegian is Næss not Naess.    When I enter the name from the Norwegian local farm books, they use the local spelling, not the English alphabet equivalent. 

What can I do about the comment from the Data_Doctors? Most of their comments I find quite helpful. this one was something I don't think I should do anything to change. Comment?

Answer 1

HI Judy

There is no problem with using Non-English Characters in Names if that is they are correct for that Language.

You have done the right thing in marking the Suggestion for an uncommon name as ' false'  - as that is what It is - the checking programme just looks at how many times the combination/spelling of all a persons names, appear in the database, and suggests that there might be something wrong, if a name combination/spelling is uncommon ( it actually might be Haaverson (with a double a) that it finds uncommon and not Næss )

but either way - if the spelling is right then mark the suggestion as false then it will not be reported again

Comments

Yes, the uncommon name is Haaverson. The "Unique name" looks at first name, middle name and nickname - not the last-name fields.

We get a lot of false errors for the "Unique name" suggestion in Scandinavia.

Answer 2

Judy, if the languages were reversed, I don’t think would have stated my questions in quite this form. You must be frustrated. I understand that. However, “some English bastardization” is not the way get folks in your side if you want to receive assistance or make a change. A little diplomacy might make all the difference. People here will listen. Give them the chance.

Comments

I agree. Question edited. OK now?  I hope so.

Judy

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Well done. Thank a bunch, Judy. You were right, the point you were trying to make. I agree on using the local spelling in the language of the setting. I hope the “higher ups” can give you a definitive answer. Hang in there.

Answer 3

Always use the characters the names were originally written in. There are so many Scandinavian names without the dots over ä and ö as well as the ring over å. a, o and a are pronounced quite differently and can even give a word a different meaning.

Andra = Other

Ändra = Change

If you see the difference. 

Answer 4

Use the script the original was written in. Wikitree uses Unicode to represent characters so there are over 130,000 characters from around the world to choose from. Many historic scripts are included as well as modern ones. See www.unicode.org

Tim

Answer 5

Use the correct Norwegian characters where appropriate.

Many people do not realise that the Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters, the extra ones being æ, ø, å. Most computers now support the easy use of language specific keyboard variants. Before the days when this was possible it was quite common to see the extra letters written as ae, oe and aa by those who did not have a Norwegian keyboard.