Is there a way to group these profiles within a category?

Question

I am working on the profiles of enslaved persons.  The current policy is to use "Unknown" for LNAB.  This groups everyone under the letter "U" when put into their location category, such as:  "Horry County, South Carolina, Slaves."  Is there a way I can group the profiles by the surname they used, rather than have them all bunched up under "U?"

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Horry_County%2C_South_Carolina%2C_Slaves

Is there a way to reorganize the category itself to cause them to sort by the last name they used?  As more profiles are added, this is going to quickly become un-useful as a category, I think.

Comments

Yeah, the pipe isn't doing it.

Answer 1

Like you, I thought an upright pipe ( | ) followed by a C would do it.  I tried changing it to Chestnut, but that didn’t work either. Seems it only sorts by LNAB.

Comments

I tried those two also. At least it's not just me.

---

sort keys only work on subcategories, not profiles.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Categorization#Changing_the_sort_order

Answer 2

Would be interested in finding a solution to this also, not necessarily in relation to slaves of African origin, but also for natives of this continent, who did not necessarily have a last name at all, it is not always a practice in all peoples.  Is there any way to create a name field for such that would obviate this problem?  I see so many baptisms of children of native origin where there is just a given name, no family name at all.  

Unknown is a misnomer if they don't actually have such a thing as a last name.

Answer 3

This is interesting.  I've been trying to figure out a way to add people enslaved by my ancestors, in order to help others trace their families.  In some cases, I have first names and sometimes relationships (before their freedom), but have had no mechanism which might be useful or helpful in figuring out how the family trees might have developed.  It seems that another identifier might be workable, like slave-holding family/person name in place of LNAB for those before emancipation, or farm/manor/plantation name, or even county/state.  Or all of the above, added as identifiers.

Comments

Right now there are categories for Slave Owners and Slaves. Some of us would prefer different terminology, but this is how it was set up years ago.  It is set up by state and county.