Family Historian User Group

Hi,

I am currently researching a family where the surname at birth of several family members is uncertain as the family seemed to use two variants interchangeably and I have yet to find the birth records for all of them.

I usually assign someone their surname at birth, where it is known.

In this case I want to reflect my uncertainty and call most of them 'Xxxx or Yyyy' for now.

FH insists on just picking up the last word in the string as the surname. Is there a way to alter this so it will treat 'Xxxx or Yyyy' as a person's surname, rather than it assuming that the surname is Yyyy?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sue

... Aha! I think maybe I have to type the 'Xxxx or Yyyy' between the // characters?? Is that right?

Anyway, this is working, so looking good! It is now treating the whole string as the surname, which is what I wanted.

(I did try searching the Knowledge Base for 'alternative surnames' but that didn't throw up anything obviously useful.)

Yes, the slash / / characters are the GEDCOM surname delimiters.
It is more obvious if Tools > Preferences > Property Box > Show Surnames Between Slashes is set to Always.

You could also use the Alternate Names as per how_to:handle_people_with_multiple_names|> How to Handle People With Multiple Names.

I also make use of the / / delimiters, when recording name of wives, whose maiden name is unknown.
I use the following format Mary /JONES Nee ??/. Which i find more useful than plain Mary /??/, as it reminds me who her husband’s surname was, and lists her alphabetically near the JONES surnames rather than lumped together with all the other unknown wives under ??.
This is also useful when groom marries a widow. So if his spouse is Mary GREEN (widow), she is recorded as Mary /GREEN Nee ??/, and only amended when her birth surname is confirmed.

I do similar but record the womans name in square brackets so she sorts with her husbands surname until such time as I know her original surname. So Mary /[Smith]/ is how I record her.

This looks like a useful technique for handling people in the 1939 Register who are part of a household but whose records are redacted. Naming them as /[head of household surname]/ helps to identify where they belong. (They are also associated by the Method 1 source citation created by AS.)