* Modern day conundrum

[ThorpeDave]

So how many times have we heard that "next year will see a new me" ?

Well, one of my relative really meant it and have changed their name via deed pole AND have declared that their gender is not the one they were assigned at birth.

Jack is now Jill (not their real names)

I suppose in future versions of FH this will be easy to handle but have not got a clue how to do it with V7

My understanding that - at some point in the future - birth certificates and marriage certificates will be changed. However, They are still the same living individual so not got a clue how to record it properly

Any suggestions - or do I wait for FH V10?

Regards

Dave

[ColeValleyGirl]

Have a look at the discussion here: (Trans)Gender as different from Sex (11954)

[ThorpeDave]

Interesting - Thanks

Don't know enough at the minute but the discussion on Sex and Gender leaves a No: of questions. Anyone can describe their "gender" as to whatever they want.

Once someone has transitioned they can go through a legal process (Gender recognition Act) to change their "sex" on their birth certificate and marriage certificate although not many do it as it is quite a daunting process apparently.

Still surprised that Deed poles are not as straight forward as they should be

Regards

Dave.

[ColeValleyGirl]

One thing to be careful of is inadvertently 'deadnaming' them in anything you publish/share. Their name should always appear as their current name, not whatever they were born as. (This is one instance where the genealogical convention to always refer to people by the name they were born with is inappropriate).

[ThorpeDave]

Agreed and rightly so

Regards

Dave

[jmurphy]

This question came up on Genealogy Stack Exchange: Including name change for transgender person in genealogy

In my answer, I included links to several sets of ethical guidelines from genealogical organizations and from GLAAD and PFLAG.

The TL;dr is: ask for Jill's consent before sharing any of her information with others (e.g. charts made for family reunions and the like).

My personal preference would be to put Jill's preferred name as the standard name in FamilyHistorian, and record variants of the deadnames as akas and/or in research notes. But for any question I might have about how to record a person's name, the polite and ethical thing to do is to refer to living people by the name or pronoun they wish to be called by.

P.S. the spelling you want for the legal document is a deed poll.

[neil40]

Have a look at the discussion here: (Trans)Gender as different from Sex (11954)

Helen,
As per your comments on Stack Exchange, I am going to add a Custom Event for this. May I ask what you used for your Sentence Template please.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Neil, my fact definition is very simple:

Screenshot 2021-12-30 092034.jpg (80.84 KiB) Viewed 3392 times

[neil40]

Many thanks. Perfect.

[GeneSniper]

Surely this is just badly designed software and badly thought out idea's. It would surely make sense to have what you are known as now as the main name on the main page of any software with names before either below or attached. I say this because when talking to relations about other relations, they use the name they are known as and not the name they were born as. I know not always the case but in the main females change their name at marriage (that can happen a few times now a days) and lots of other reasons.

I have a great gran who was known as Jessie Frier and no one I know or spoke to about her knew her as anything else. She was known by that name for 67 of her 85 years and as Jessie Jackson for the other 18 and yet she is Janet Jackson in my tree. Any relative (not many now) who knew her looked at my tree they wouldn't know who Janet Jackson was. I even have an aunt who's husband didn't know his wife's actual given name until he went to register her death with her birth certificate, he even told the registrar she had put the wrong name on the death certificate until he was shown her birth certificate. She was NEVER known by her given name (as it was the same as her grans, who brought her up as her own child) and if I had asked her husband for family information my tree would have been way out, as the complete family changed their surname and he never knew his wife's christian name. Someone looking at my tree wouldn't be able to know who this family is if they had only known them for the last 30 yrs, as none of them use their names from birth and their daughters first and surname have changed since then as well.

Now this isn't a FH problem it is more a Genealogy problem. I know there is some software that uses the 'known as' name in there main screen but not many. I am not saying it is wrong but modern life has made some things outdated (more unmarried couples, people using their surname as a middle name when they get married, hyphenated surnames, unmarried mothers whose children have their fathers surnames and sometimes more than one father but using only one surname for all) and a rethink on layout and the ability to change it easily, should be at the top of all developers lists. I know this is a whole other can of worms but it would more easily solve changes to modern living and no one can tell me that this would be such a hard thing to do in software.

[ColeValleyGirl]

William, if that's the way you prefer to work, there's nothing stopping you recording the name somebody is 'known as' as their name, and others as alternates. (You might find some queries and plugins don't expect that, but there are always consequences for every decision.) It might make sense to be consistent though, otherwise it could get confusing for people looking at your tree.

In which case, what would you suggest I do with an ancestor born as Stanley Reynolds Wright, and referred to as Stanley Wright, John Stanley Wright, John Wright and John William Wright in various documents (there's nobody alive who can tell me what he 'preferred' to be called -- even the documents that can be expected to rely on his testimony vary). There's no rational grounds for picking one other than another...

[GeneSniper]

Helen

and a rethink on layout and the ability to change it easily

That was why i wrote this in my post, my suggestion would be a simple 'known as' button that changed the view from the name given at birth to put in the known as name (if their is one) in its place and back again.

You mention Deadnaming someone and yet that is what we do when ever someone marries and changes their surname to the same as their partner. We never change their name to reflect this. There is no difference you are just changing your name, so why do we feel that it is okay to change one and not the other, after all they could both be using their new name for an awfully long time (they will always be known as their dead name in our tree) and most people who never know them pre marriage/ transition would not know their birth name. This is more an issue for people who are living, an example I would give is my wifes aunt who uses and has always used Anne as her name and would take a sharp pointy stick to anyone who used her given name Annie when speaking to her. She is in my tree as Annie and knows this, but hates the name. This was why I said "ability to change it easily" that way if I was printing out a tree for her, I could click a button print the tree with all the 'known as' names and quickly change back to my tree as it would normally be.

As for your example, as you say don't know what he was known as, only names he used in some documents, so you would use his birth name. I think this (as I said above) is a living person issue, the dead are really not that worried, living relatives of the dead maybe moan a bit about using the wrong name (in their eyes) but as a whole not that worried and the living, well they're a whole other story. After all I don't sign my full name on a document and even the bank only use my middle initial, but there is a company I used to deal with through my work that insisted on using my first and middle name on all corespondance but not my surname and they run a restricted acces site

[tatewise]

It is not a one-click button but it is quite easy to swap the Primary Name and an Alternate Name (AKA).
Click the more (+)... link next to a person's Name in the Property Box.
In the Names & Titles dialogue select the Alternate Name you want to make Primary and click Make Primary.
That swaps it with the Primary Name and it is just as easy to swap back.

[ColeValleyGirl]

'Deadnaming' has a particular meaning with respective to transgender individuals: Deadnaming. You may not be cognisant of the concept, or that it doesn't apply to simple name changes when the gender does not change (e.g surname changes). If you don't have any (known) transgender individuals in your tree, it's irrelevant, otherwise you may wish to take it into account.

For other matters, if you sometimes use a birth name and sometimes use a 'usual name', how are people referring to your trees expected to know which is which, whether they're living or dead? (Not an issue if you don't share your tree except with close relatives who recognise married names, and you don't intend to expand your research contacts beyond close relatives).

For Aunt Anne/Annie, explore 'Given Name Used' or 'Nickname' for an individual, and modify the possibilities to display charts and reports.

[neil40]

It is not a one-click button but it is quite easy to swap the Primary Name and an Alternate Name (AKA).
Click the more (+)... link next to a person's Name in the Property Box.
In the Names & Titles dialogue select the Alternate Name you want to make Primary and click Make Primary.
That swaps it with the Primary Name and it is just as easy to swap back.

This is exactly what I did with the example I asked Helen about above.
My particular relative has ALWAYS been called Billy, which suits both genders, but is registered as William Charles, so that is the name in FH and I used the method here to make Billy the primary, which appears on all reports and charts, and added a gender reassignment fact as per Helen's suggestion.

[GeneSniper]

It is not a one-click button but it is quite easy to swap the Primary Name and an Alternate Name (AKA).
Click the more (+)... link next to a person's Name in the Property Box.
In the Names & Titles dialogue select the Alternate Name you want to make Primary and click Make Primary.
That swaps it with the Primary Name and it is just as easy to swap back.

Mike

Do you have to do this individually to each person? I ask this because I was looking for a way to do it across whole families or even whole sections of families. My mothers family just from her parents down, have so many people who go by different forenames/ surnames it would take forever to do it individually and then change it back again and if you showed the tree to most members of the family they wouldn't know who was in the tree. I am not saying William to Bill, I am saying Thomas to John and as i said before whole families surname changing. No one even knows about the forename changes because they were never known by their given names and the name they are known by are not even middle names.

[tatewise]

Yes, you have to repeat that for each Individual. Your description did not make it clear you wanted bulk swapping.
How would a single button know which Individuals need their names swapping and which don't?
I think the only way to achieve that kind of bulk swapping is with a plugin and Individuals identified with either a Flag or by the membership of a Named List.

[LornaCraig]

if you showed the tree to most members of the family they wouldn't know who was in the tree. I am not saying William to Bill, I am saying Thomas to John and as i said before whole families surname changing. No one even knows about the forename changes because they were never known by their given names and the name they are known by are not even middle names.

Surely the whole point of showing family members a tree is to show them something about their family which they don't already know. So why not use a diagram text scheme which gives the registered birth name followed by "known as" and then the alternate names? Family members will then be able to pick out people by their "known as" names but will learn something interesting about the family (the various name changes) in the process. And if you include a picture of each person in the diagram, when you have one, it will be even easier to pick people out.

[GeneSniper]

Mike

my suggestion would be a simple 'known as' button that changed the view from the name given at birth to put in the known as name (if their is one) in its place and back again.

I thought I did when I said view and (if their is one), but obviously not.

Helen

The problem for me with your suggestion is that quite a few of the people wouldn't want their 'not known as' name there for others to see. When I first started doing this I went to quite a few relatives who blatantly mislead me as to their and their childrens names and it was only as I did more digging that I found out the truth. It is amazing how someone is quite happy to tell you all the seedy details about Aunt and Uncle So and so's family secrets and then just happen to miss out that their family secrets were even worse. Luckily the other family were the same, so I got the information to help searching from either side

[tatewise]

If it is only in the published tree diagrams that such name swapping is needed then try adjusting the Diagram Text Scheme.
I assume the people who need their names swapped could be identified with a record Flag.
The Diagram Text Scheme can test if Individuals have the Flag set and then display the Alternative Name.
i.e.
You can have two Name items:
1) The first has the Template %INDI.NAME[2]:FULL% and conditional on the Flag Condition being set for a named Flag.
So that will display the Alternate Name only if such a name exists and the Flag is set.
2) The other is based on the existing standard Name item but tick the 'Only output if previous item blank' option so the Primary Name is only shown if no Alternate Name is displayed by the previous Name item.

[Moirty]

Neil, my fact definition is very simple:

Screenshot 2021-12-30 092034.jpg

This solution seems elegant and appropriate. The individual also approves this approach.
HOWEVER, when I use the fact definition as shown, the text ends up saying "His gender was reassigned" referring to the birth sex. The individual's preferred text would be "Her gender was reassigned." Is there a way to force FH to do this?

-Moirty

[ColeValleyGirl]

If you change the individual's gender to their current gender (not their birth gender) it should be oK?

[Moirty]

FH tracks sex; not gender. Yes, I could change the sex in FH; but that would not be correct for this individual who has changed gender (but not sex).

[davidf]

Stepping into a minefield?

If "John" becomes "Jane", surely the Gender Reassignment sentence has to say either "His gender was reassigned" (to presumably female) or "She acquired the feminine gender" (or better words to that effect).

"Her gender was reassigned" would imply to me that at birth her assigned gender was female but on that event it was reassigned to male.

The alternative is to follow deadnaming to its logical conclusion:

... some transgender people insist on preventing deadnaming in part as a strategy of prospective self-assertion: "by insisting on the primacy of the present, by seeking to erase the past, or even by emotionally locating their 'real self' in the future, that elusive place where access (to transition, health care, housing, a livable wage, and so on) and social viability tend to appear more abundant."

(From Wikipedia, citing Crawford, Lucas (January 2, 2019). "What's Next is the Past". A/B: Auto/Biography Studies. 34 (1): 147–150. doi:10.1080/08989575.2019.1542845. ISSN 0898-9575. S2CID 188098200)

That would seem to say that up to "transition" (however that is legally or personally defined) you have one person (as in FH Individual record) whose facts cease at that moment and then you have a new person (primarily with new name and gender) to which you attach subsequent facts - including presumably any "reissued" birth and marriage/partnership records. The question then is whether to hide the earlier person from all output and live with any confusion?

[ColeValleyGirl]

FH tracks sex; not gender. Yes, I could change the sex in FH; but that would not be correct for this individual who has changed gender (but not sex).

I'm not touching that, because you're opening a can of worms that doesn't belong on this site.