This is a good example of the hidden "gotchas" that lie in wait for the new genealogist. FamilySearch often standardizes the catalog on a specific gazetteer, which isn't bad in itself, it's just that they don't make that evident to their users. (In the case of Germany, the standard is Meyers-Orts.) I think it's important to realize that the FamilySearch Catalog is, under the hood, the catalog of the Family History *Library* -- in short, they are librarians, not archivists.AdrianBruce wrote:Thanks Jan. Sounds good best practice to me.jmurphy wrote:... Best practice is probably to spell out the word "county" in full, e.g. Alameda, Alameda County, California (plus whatever you like for USA) but it can get very long, especially if you spell out United States. ...
These issues seem to come up especially for me around the Family Search Standard Place-names tools https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/, where the standard names currently omit any hint of the type of place-name - it's neither in the name itself nor as extra data. This leads to particular confusion around the Independent City of Baltimore, where both the City and County end up as "Baltimore, Maryland, United States". In fairness, FS do recognise that there are issues, while nobody said this sort of thing was easy - but... It's one reason why I'm seriously dubious about the concept of a Place Name Authority "table" that has been mooted. Nobody can be expected to be an authority everywhere.
People who are experienced with both Ancestry and FamilySearch know that it's often best practice to start with a very wide search and then to narrow the search, a process called "drilling down". This is especially true with the place search on FamilySearch, where they expect you to search all the jurisdictions from biggest to smallest.