Proper use of name/data fields for medieval and earlier profiles (aka EuroAristo)

Question

By request, here is a list of the proper use of fields for medieval and earlier profiles.  Please review and ask questions on G2G with regard to them.  This is a consensus of what is correct and was put together by present and past leaders of the European Aristocrats Project.

PROPER USE OF DATA FIELDS FOR MEDIEVAL AND EARLIER PROFILES:

1. PREFIX FIELD: This is for a title such as 'Sir' or 'Reverend'. A man who was knighted was called Sir. Do not use this field for long titles, such as 'Earl of Angus'. Titles such as that belong in the 'Other Nickname' field. Don’t use this field for ‘King’,’Duke’, ‘Lady’.  For medieval and earlier profiles, ‘Sir’ is almost the only acceptable use of the prefix field.

2. PROPER FIRST NAME:  This is first name at birth, in the person’s native language.  It should be one word only.

3.  PREFERRED NAME:   This is the name of the person as they were generally known/called/referred to.  It would also have a numeral (i.e. I, II, III) with it if they are known as the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd.  Example:  Henry III of England - his proper first name is Henry, preferred name is Henry III.

4. OTHER NICKNAMES: This is where their title belongs (i.e. ‘King of England’, ‘Queen of Scots’, ‘Lord of Dunmow’, ‘Grand Chamberlain of France’, etc.). Titles do not include numbers (i.e.‘Earl of Arundel’, not ‘3^rd Earl of Arundel’).  This is also where any actual nicknames (i.e. ‘The Younger’, ‘The Poor’, ‘Talvas’, ‘The Loyal’, ‘Copped Hat’, etc.) and translations such as Eléonore, Leonor, Eleanor belong.  Do not put these in quotations.  Separate multiple names with a comma.

5. MIDDLE NAME:  Very few people in the middle ages had a middle name, so this tends to be blank.  However, this may be used for a patronymic, if this is not the LNAB.

6. LAST NAME AT BIRTH:  This is the name they had (or would have been known by) when they were born.  In most cases, it is one word.  Exceptions to this are ‘de Vere’ and families that had ‘St’ as part of their name (such as St John, St Aubyn, St Hilary, St Liz, St Pol, St Sauveur).  See below.

• PREFIXES IN LAST NAME AT BIRTH FIELD:
  • Names like St John:   "St" is a prefix which stays with the surname; that is, "St John" goes in the LNAB field, and St is not dropped nor separated out into the prefix field.  Do not put a period after the St and do not spell out the word Saint.
  • The common ‘de’, ‘du’, ‘le’, ‘la’, ‘de la’ before a surname does not go in the LNAB field; it goes with the surname in the Current Last Name field while the surname, ONE word, goes in the LNAB. Example: Last name at birth: "Villefort", Current Last Name: "de Villefort". The exception to this is de Vere. Members of this family should have both words in the LNAB field.
  • Names that include ‘Fitz’:  Fitz- names should be written with mid-caps, that is, a capital letter for the father's name. For example, write FitzAlan, FitzGeoffrey, FitzGerald, etc. This is the same pattern as used in names with Mac-: MacMurray, MacDonald, etc. Do not include a space.

7.  CURRENT LAST NAME:  For people who are known by last names that are commonly prefaced by prepositions ("de," "d'," "von," "van," "of," etc.) or articles ("the," "le," etc.), the Current Last Name should include that prefacing preposition or article. For example, Roger de Mowbray, while his Last Name at Birth is Mowbray, has de Mowbray as his Current Last Name. For nobility, the country, dukedom, etc., may be used here, with a preposition, as for example, of England or de León.

•  Women generally take their husband’s CLN, although not a patronymic. The last name at death is the name used here.

8.  OTHER LAST NAME:  This should include alternate last names and last name variations, separated by commas. Prior married names for women occur here. This is not the place for titles (those go in the Nickname field).

9.  SUFFIX:  These were not generally used in the Middle Ages. Modern usage includes Jr, Sr, III, IV, and so on. For kings and queens the number should go as part of the Preferred First Name instead of in the Suffix. For example, VI is not an appropriate Suffix for King George VI.

NOTES/RULES REGARDING PROPER USE OF FIELDS AND USE OF PUNCTUATION, ETC.

• PUNCTUATION: The correct style is to NOT use a period after a prefix such as Rev or Capt or St.
• PREFIX/SUFFIX:  There is no leeway on the rules for prefixes and suffixes; that is, those fields cannot be used for anything else.
• SUFFIXES IN LAST NAME: Jr, Sr, III, for moderns, and occasional KG or KB for medieval profiles go in the suffix field. NOTHING else goes in the suffix field.
• TITLES: Titles do not go in prefix or suffix fields. They go in the biography. However, what people were called (King of England, Duc d'Angoulême, Lord Mountbatten, the Fat) belongs in the OTHER NICKNAMES field.
• ALTERNATE SPELLING OF LAST NAME: alternate spellings go in the Other Last Name field (example:  William d’Aubeney would have LNAB Aubeney, CLN d’Aubeney, OLN de Albini, d’Aubigné)
• PATRONYMICS: Patronymics are middle names (unless nothing else is available).
• WELSH NAMES: Welsh names are a muddle. Write a question on the G2G forum and get input from other before proceeding.
• We use the native language of the person within reason. Wikipedia is very good about translations.
• NUMERALS: These go as part of the preferred name in medieval and older profiles (i.e. Richard III, Henry VIII).

Please review the profiles you manage and bring them into compliance with these standards.  Thanks.

Darlene - Co-Leader, European Aristocrats Project

Comments

Thanks, Darlene. Does this match or at least is it consistent with:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields_for_European_Aristocrats ?

That's the page that's accessible from the Style Guide submenu of Help.  an initial perusal seems like its different but I could be wrong.

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Jilliane, what I posted is nothing new.  The standards were set, from what I've heard, a couple years ago (with perhaps the exception of 'fitz', which was discussed & decided earlier this year).  But people seem to continue to do as they please as opposed to following the standards.

Please tell us what you find to be 'different'.

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Okay, I just tried to do a quick comparison.

It looks like most differences are in the last section above that are bulleted. I don't see reference in http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields_for_European_Aristocrats 

to the guidance above  you provide for punctuation, Welsh names or married women's CLN.  

I don't see in your text above how patronymics (house names) are preferred over place names, which is described in the help page.

Those are the only differences I caught.

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Thank you Darlene, this is the clearest and most description of these standards that I have seen.

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I concur!

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First, von is German in origin. It has been used by all members of the noble families in German countries until the Middle Ages. A person who is or has become a noble can put “von” before their surname to indicate this status. After the Middle Ages, it has been transformed into a common prefix to any Germanic surname and was later used by commoners. It has been a familiar pattern in German surnames to begin with von. Since German blood also flourishes in Austria and Russia, many Austrian and Russian citizens carry the prefix as part of the German surname.

Read more: Difference Between Von and Van | Difference Between | Von vs Van http://www.differencebetween.net/language/words-language/difference-between-von-and-van/#ixzz372S9LyiU

 

Does this apply to Vincent van Gogh?  According to relatives of german ancestry, they were extremely proud that their Proper Surname included the Van or Von seperated and commoners were forced to remove the separation.

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I can't talk for all of the german nobility in Wikitree but certainly the profiles I've adopted are mostly of the higher nobility who often didn't have surnames and we are effectively 'inventing' (hopefully) appropriate names.  Even the major dynastic names seem to be known as Haus Hohenzollern, Haus Wettin etc, rather than Haus von Hohenzollern.

The 'von' that appears in many of the profiles in this group, such as Markgraf von Brandenburg, Prinz von Sachsen or Herzog von Württemberg, are actually territorial designations rather than actual surnames and are the equivalent of saying Prince of England, or Duke of Norfolk.

The other issue has to do with indexing, if I wanted to manually create an index of German nobles, I could easily leave out any surname prefix to make sure I didn't have a huge file of names starting with 'V', but Wikitree is a computer program and can't effectively do that.

In my view, we can make a difference between the nobility the Euroaristo group is mainly interested in and not use a von or van in the Last Name at Birth for those profiles,but still allowing Wikitreers who feel that the prefix is an intregal part of their ancestors surname, such as Van Gogh to continue to do so.

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Current German law makes the predicates "von", "von und zu" etc. and even titles such as "Prinz", "Graf", "Freiherr" an integral part of the last name. This happened in 1919 when the Weimar Republic elimited all privileges of nobility. The law stipulated that whoever legally carried a predicate and title at that time could continue to use it as part of their last name. And in the Holy Roman Empire many but not all nobles used the predicate in their name from medieval times, although from about 1650 on it became the common use.

Like many things naming conventions for nobility vary from country to country, sometimes even from region to region within a country. Software such as Wikitree is not flexible enough to accommodate all possible variations and so compromises need to be made. The above naming rules appear pretty close to the naming conventions in the UK, probably not surprising given that this is a website with predominantly anglo-american users.

Answer 1

Thank you Darlene, that is clear and precise and very helpful.

Comments

Thanks so much and I added this to my favorite for reference for future merges and editing.

Answer 2

Just a query about changing profiles to meet these standards and merging.  I've adopted profiles that need work to bring them into line with the standards and there might already be existing profiles for that person elsewhere in Wikitree.

I'm wondering if it is better to change the names on the profile I've adopted first and then go looking for any duplicates?

Or leave the profile as is, and merge it into a correctly named profile, if one exists?

I know when merging three or more profiles you select the correctly named profile and merge all the others into that one, rather than A into B and B into C etc.  Should I be following a similar process?

Comments

Yes, it would be better to merge into an existing profile with the correct LNAB.

Since there's only one correct LNAB, this means only the duplicates with that LNAB need to be found before merging can begin, so it's usually a pretty easy process.

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Thank you Lianne.  I was thinking it would be a long process, but you're right of course, I only have to search for the correct LNAB and worry about all the others that might be lurking out there later on.

Answer 3

Thanks for this, Darlene!

One question: "We use the native language of the person within reason." What constitutes "within reason"? I can't think of a case when the native language shouldn't be used.

Comments

A few reasons:

Some royal families used Latin in formal documents. Their native language names weren't often used.

The Basque language wasn't standardized until the 1960s, and has several dialects.

If we're getting back into the time of Charlemagne and earlier, deciding on a Gothic language surname can be difficult when the researchers are more familiar with modern languages and the name of the person in those modern languages.

Outside of Europe (so outside the scope of this project, but worth mentioning), many languages didn't have a written component until relatively recent history. These names are likely to be Anglicized, Francicized, or Germanicized. (How's that for Anglifying some words up?!)

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In fact most (all?) documents in the medieval period in Europe were written in Latin and often the spelling of both first names and surnames could vary from one document to the next.  Although we are trying to use the names they would have used, sometimes you have to put a 'modern spin' on the names just for consistency.

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Good points I hadn't thought of (probably since I don't work on medieval profiles). Thanks for the clarification!

Answer 4

Due to one project we plan on doing away with one of the finest qualities of WikiTree?

Use their conventions instead of ours

We aim to use the names that people themselves would have known and that would have been recognized in their own time and place.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields#Use_their_conventions_instead_of_ours

Comments

David,

This breakdown of the proper use of name fields for medieval and earlier profiles isn't something that is new.  It was discussed and decided over two years ago.  All I was doing was providing a brief breakdown of it by request.  Many people are unaware of the naming conventions for these profiles that encompass tens of thousands of profiles of HSA (historically significant ancestors).  The reason we have them is due to the limitations of WikiTree.  The limitations of the search engines/fields on WikiTree is what requires us to handle it in this manner.

You need to understand this is only dealing with these particular profiles.  The page you reference notes that people dealing with European Aristocrats have a special set of naming standards, with a link given to the page.  As I mentioned, this is not a new set of standards.

Darlene

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Darlene,

Although I applaud your enthusiam, I prefer to build on the positive things that are currently easily addressed.  Technology is escalating at an exponential rate.  I would prefer we work on un-sourced profiles or adopted relationships...   A space in a surname is something I've been able to easily overcome through the use of "wildcards" in a search and likely the reason you are attempting to over-throw the basic cherished practice of using the LNAB as known in their lifetime.  Your point of preserving HSA by deleting articles in names appears to be counter-productive.  I am only hoping to facilitate the user-friendly methodology currently in use.  Changing LNAB from one site to another doesn't make sense.  If the goal is to build a worldwide tree, shouldn't we be investigating when the technology may expand to this site and not be making choices to merge on some potentially correct or incorrect name?  Variables in names are nothing new.

I believe there may be too many downsides by truncating names.  

Thank-you for your understanding!

David

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David,

I am not "attempting to over-throw the basic cherished practice of using the LNAB as known in their lifetime."  As I previously mentioned to you, I did not come up with these naming standards.  These are not new standards. They were discussed and decided by a group of people over the past couple of years.  I wasn't part of the discussion. However, as a member of WikiTree, I agreed to abide by WikiTree's standards.  As a recent co-leader of the European Aristocrats project, I am attempting to make everyone aware of the standards.

Everyone has things they 'prefer' to work on.  They're all important to the overall worldwide collaborative tree, and that's one of the nice things about WikiTree.  Some people like to create profiles; others like to work on cleaning up profiles. Some people are arborists and like to find & merge profiles.  If you want to work on un-sourced profiles, I agree that is very important and I applaud you.  A very important task is to get this huge group of profiles standardized.  That is why I posted the list.  It's not new.  It's just a reminder of what needs to be done to bring them into compliance.  New WikiTree contributors are many times not familiar with the standards.  Even people that have been here for awhile haven't necessarily looked at and become familiar with the standards.

Darlene

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That is great!  I have been using the standards 

Surname prepositions, particles, and prefixes

Care must be exercised to ensure surnames that use a particle, prefix, or preposition, such as Le, La, De, Du, Van, Van Der, Den, Ten, Zum, etc. correctly reflect the spacing used in the individual's name when they were alive. Example "van den Berg" as compared with "Vandenberg". As with any other change of name, in the generation(s) where the rendering of the name changes, the version used at birth should be entered as the Last Name at Birth (LNAB), and the version used later should be reflected as the Current Last Name or in the Other Last Names field as appropriate.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields#Use_their_conventions_instead_of_ours

I thought I read above that you were proposing to change this.

Have a Great Day!

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David,

If you are involved with medieval or earlier profiles that would be part of the European Aristocrats project, you need to use the standards for those profiles.  My original post wasn't proposing anything.  It was posting to G2G a list of the standards.  You keep referring to the Name Fields guidelines page.  If you will go to that page and look at the top of it in the very first section, you will see that it says, "Medieval profiles have very particular naming standards. Please do not edit or create any profiles from prior to 1600 A.D. without first reading the guidelines here. "

Further down on that same page, where it discusses surname prepositions, particles and prefixes, it states, "Knowing what LNAB to use is often very difficult. If a person could fit within an established project consult with the project members and refer to project-specific style guides such as Name Fields for European Aristocrats."

These will take you to this page:  http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Name_Fields_for_European_Aristocrats

The standards as shown on that page, and which were summarized in the top post of this discussion, are what is to be used for medieval and earlier profiles.  These profiles are exceptions to the general WikiTree naming standards.  As such, they must be treated differently and adhere to the standards as shown in my original post and as detailed on the above referenced page.

 

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Exactly!  Your original post was very clear and accurate, Thanks for posting it on G2G.  That makes it earier for everyone to find.