Family Historian User Group

My surname has been spelt differently over the years. I have records of a number of different spellings. Mainly 2.
How can I quickly find if I have duplicates of the same name recorded with an alternative spelling?

There is a Find Duplicate Individuals plugin in the plugin store that should help you with this. I run it regularly as I use FH for my surname study.

When you have found the duplicates and reduced them down to one record, click the All tab in the Property Box, right click your name, and click Add Name. In diagrams it will show the main version of your name and the alternatives as aka (also known as).

Can I add to this thread please?

I am in big trouble with surnames spelled three ways in German. Grünberg with an umlaut (the dots). The modern convention when one cant type the accent is Gruenberg, inserting an e after the accented vowel. But some websites simplify it Grunberg.

These names sort in a different sort order. So I am getting members of the same nuclear family whose surnames come from different sources not coming together on the list.

I know one can enter additional names in FH and give the archival source for each of them. But they are hidden away in a sub field of Name. And (apart from the source) do not carry dates.

Is there any way of getting these names to show on the list of Individuals?

And / Or on the Main tag of the Property box?

And the same thing happens with Name Changes of which I have many?
I seems to have added a FH set of Events for this, Name Changes but I do not know how to use this. It shows on the list of Events to enter as Deedpoll but where to write the Names and do the names get entered as Names? British National Archive indexes often just state, known as and give a different name. Nothing official.

One of the features of FH and I suspect most current genealogy software is that name changes over time are not recognized as such.
AKA names entered in the additional names dialog can be filtered on: so to take your example; as long as your preferred version (the accented one?) is included as an alternative in each record then filtering will create a list of individuals with that name or a variation. However, that does not help with sorting in the main list.

You can add the additional names to the column list in the Individual tab of the Records window as follows:
Right-click on the columns Bar and select Configure Columns. This will open a dialog box with the various preset possibilities in a list on the left and the existing columns in a list on the right.
Scroll to the bottom of the list in the left pane and double-click Other. This will open a Dialog box to construct a new column
Heading: AKA 2(or your choice)
Expression: %INDI.NAME[2]% (If you select Name from the Insert Data Ref.. you will get %INDI.NAME[1]%, alter the index to get other names)
Default Sort Direction: (again your choice)
Now click Add and the new AKA 2 column will appear at the end of the Column List and you can select and move it to where you want.

David

You can similarly add %INDI.NAME[2]% as a Customize Data Entry field in the Main tab of Property Box as we have explored in other threads. This is another example of 1st, 2nd, et seq instances of a tag with index [1], [2], etc.

In both the Property Box and Records Window case you can use the :SURNAME qualifier to save space.
e.g. %INDI.NAME[2]:SURNAME%

Also try using the :SOUNDEX qualifier, which is not perfect but may help.
e.g. %INDI.NAME[1]:SOUNDEX%
If you sort on the Soundex column, then for example Gruenberg, Grunberg, Grünberg all have Soundex G651 so group together, whereas say Grueher, Gruher, Grüher all have G660.

This is all new to me - Particularly the soundex. Thank you. I will think it out. Better than I expected. Since on line indexers have this problem too.

DavidNewton wrote:... as long as your preferred version ... is included as an alternative in each record then filtering will create a list of individuals with that name or a variation. ...

Thank you David - I never realised that! My GG-GF was known as either James Maddocks or James Griffiths - something to do with not wanting people to find out that he was marrying his 2nd wife bigamously! His "proper" name is James Griffiths and he has an alternate name of James Maddocks.

Using filtering on "Griffiths James" obviously finds him. Until just, I had not realised but using filtering on "Maddocks James" will also find him. Or even filtering on "Maddo Jam" to cover spelling variations....

I really would encourage people to use filtering to find individuals - you just need to click on the Individuals tab in the Records window and type a part name. It even works with filtering wives by their default married name. Unless you're doing a One Name study, you get a very short list to look at to do your final visual selection.

For future reference, whenever there is a new major release of FH, it lists the new features and for V6 that is in What’s New In Version 6 where the Quick Filtering in Lists is summarised. So my inquisitiveness leads me to investigate the Records Window Filter: Options and its Help for Individuals, Families, and Sources.

... Of course, you do have to remember the options that you set, or agreed with the defaults thereof. Clearly, "I never knew that..." actually appears to mean, "I never knew that after I forgot it..." Ahem.