Can we have an option to remove "formerly" before LNAB?

Question

Strikes me this should be possible with a simple checkbox or similar. It would reduce complaints about wikitree and improve many profiles in a clear way that everyone should be able to understand, at least outside of wikitree.

I think everyone knows that the forced insertion of "formerly" into the names of historical figures and non Anglo-Saxons makes many profile names unrecognizable, deliberately inaccurate, and ugly. 

Anyone who says it helps searching is thinking purely in terms of internal wikitree search problems. 

This is one of the apparently permanent problems in Wikitree which gives it a poor reputation for actually caring about accurate genealogy.

I think we all know that the LNAB field is something Wikitree currently forces us to fill in despite the fact that last names do not exist for most people.

But also remember that even among the minority of dead people who had a last name, those who had more than one were NOT all women who got married.

We have to avoid letting wikitree becoming an insiders-only alternative reality.

This is one of those questions where I suppose people will divide between those who hope this website can be useful to non-insiders, and real, accurate, genealogy, and those who define all the aims and concerns of the website in insiders-only "sense of satisfaction" terms - the pleasure of having all boxes filled in.

Comments

Can you give some examples of current name displays that use "formerly", and how you would prefer the name to be displayed?

For example, how should this be formatted when the "formerly" is removed?

Lars Danielsen (Lewis) Nelson formerly Nielsen aka Nilsen

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I think nearly anything would be better than what we have now, such as:

Nelson (aka Nielsen or Nilsen)

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I agree very much with Andrew here. For instance in the Norway Project, we've decided to enter the patronym in LNAB, and farm name (or other cognomen) as either CLN or OLN. "Peder (Olsen) Berg" looks sort of decent, while "Peder Berg formerly Olsen" just looks silly. Personally I prefer to put the farm name in OLN, as "Peder Olsen aka Berg" is a lot more to the point. The OLN won't show up anywhere but on the profile page, though.

Answer 1

The requirement for surnames at all is a problem, honestly, since in many cultures (Wales, Scandinavia) well into the modern period there were no fixed surnames, only patronymics (and also many historical figures with well-documented genealogies had no surnames...which results in absurdities like this: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Carolingian-77 ); the fact that Wikitree assumes everyone should have a middle name is another thing that I find incredibly vexing (there should be an option to tick the box for "no middle name" when creating a profile; middle names are another recent innovation and are exceedingly rare to nonexistent prior to 1800 in the US and elsewhere in the English-speaking world).

Comments

I suppose that there are several interconnected problems we could discuss, and some are harder to discuss than others. They are connected to some deeper issues of general policy and approach. However, in this case I am hoping I can see one SIMPLE tweak which could make things at least look better.

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Middle name field does have an option to state there is no middle name

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Yes, but you should be able to do that when creating a profile. As it is now you can only leave it blank, save, then edit it again to tick that box.

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I do not find it a huge burden to click on "no middle name" later, but what really does frustrate me is all the made-up middle names I find on profiles, with absolutely no documentation, and little likelihood that they are actually correct.  As C. said, they are rare prior to 1800.

Answer 2

What I am frustrated with and tired of seeing, is endless discussion about these issues on WikiTree, and nothing being done to resolve these important issues that helps to make WikiTree global.

Instead, other issues seem to get more attention, like where to place categories on a page. Or whether or not to create special categories of users.

There really needs to be a true list of bugs and features that can be made public, and perhaps a voting system to help prioritize which things are more important to the community to get fixed.

Comments

Eric - have you looked at this list lately?

https://trello.com/b/xTDiSnSW/wikitree-bugs-improvements

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First I've seen this. Hmm.

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It's been going for nearly a year now.  First discussed on 1 January 2019 after a post by...oh look...Eric Weddington!