Family Historian User Group

First, let me state how great this forum is. For newbies like me, you have answered a lot of my questions already just by searching for them. Unfortunately for me, the depth of this program is astounding and I'm still in the learning curve and probably not using the correct search terms.
So here is my question: other programs I have used allow you to download a places database. When you enter a location, previously unused, it would offer suggestions based on your spelling. I am only seeing places that were from my data import. I am sure it is out there but I haven't found it yet.
Thanks as always.

I know what you mean, but FH does not have that feature.

The general concept is that you enter new Place names from source documents as new facts are entered.
If necessary they need to be researched to discover the appropriate contemporary form of that Place.
If you need to combine similar Place names then that can be done via the Tools > Work with Data > Places dialogue.

See FHUG Knowledge Base Working with Places and Addresses for related advice.

Mike: you truly are a TFH megastar. Thanks for the response. I did refer to that KB topic but figured a database may have been another topic. I'm learning.

Let us explore the concept of a Places database for FH a little further.

It is technically possible to create a GEDCOM containing only Place records in FH format and merge that into any Project.
However, there are some challenges to overcome...

Place Column Format
I suspect other products with a Places database have a rigid Place naming structure that all users must follow.
As you have learnt from Working with Places and Addresses, FH is less rigid and more flexible.
Your Place name columns may involve building, street, parish/district, town/city, county, state, country, etc.
A Places database may have a different column structure. However, that could be resolved with the 'Rearrange Address and Place Parts' plugin.

Database Coverage
FH users focus on ancestors all over the world in Europe, North America, Australasia, India, and elsewhere.
Would a Places database have separate components for different countries or regions?
If the user only loaded one component of the database and searched for say Wellington they may not realise that there are several such places in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, UK and USA!

Database History
As explained in Working with Places and Addresses, Places change name and jurisdiction over time.
So which time eras must the Places database accommodate?
Should it provide the contemporary Place names for each location throughout time?
For example, the UK has a very chequered history of changing county boundaries, and near their conception, Australia, Canada and USA did not have those names!

Database Search
To cope with some of the above cases it may be more useful to search Place names from the righthand column end.
i.e. Country and then state or county before town/city.
Taking all the above into account, and given the search capabilities of Google, etc, then is a Places database worthwhile?

A useful helper is available on the Map as you can type a placename in at the top and it will send back a list of matching places from the Geocode DB.

Jane wrote: ↑

26 Oct 2021 13:22

A useful helper is available on the Map as you can type a placename in at the top and it will send back a list of matching places from the Geocode DB.

If that doesn’t work, get yourself a good gazeteer. I picked up a 1988 Batholomew UK Gazeteer, from a 2nd hand bookshop, and find it invaluable.

Neither of those last two suggestions will necessarily help with historical place names where the place no longer exists or is in a different jurisdiction.

There are several old (by old, I mean 1800’s) topographical dictionaries of England, Ireland, Scotland and possibly some non-English speaking countries available for download in PDF format on Ancestry Books and the Archive site.

I use them extensively. They are packed with information.

Rich

I get over that drawback, Mike, by using Oliver and Boyd's Pronouncing Gazetteer (published 1879), but there are plenty of on-line historical gazetteers, many specialising in a specific area of the world.

I'd be interested to know if the programmes previously used by the OP provided historical place names or just modern ones in their places database.

For finding and dis-disambiguating place names:

I find the 1851 Historical Jurisdictions map invaluable for England and Wales

https://www.familysearch.org/mapp/#layer

You can search for a parish of that time, see adjoining parishes, pickup the relevant (for the time) registration district and look for places within the parish.

Genuki's gazeteer should not be forgotten

https://www.genuki.org.uk/gazetteer

For modern day Great Britain, Streetmap.co.uk effectively has a gazetteer behind its search function (both places and streets).

And when all else fails Google map search can help!

Yes, the problems about a database of Place-Names supplied by an outside body include:

• Debate over historic names - should you include "Germany" prior to 1871 or "Australia" prior to 1901?
• What is a country anyway? Is the Holy Roman Empire really a country in the 1700s?
• Do you cover all such names, however short lived? (cf the various confederations of "Germany" between the demise of the HRE and 1871);
• Which language should the place-names be expressed in? "Deutschland" might be an affectation if you only have 1 or 2 events there;
• Which spelling? Look at the countless variations in English spellings of Indian place-names during the era of the East India Company and the Raj;
• The never ending task of adding in extra names;
• Arising from the inevitable incompleteness, the need to add the possibility of user entered extensions.

Some of the above comments come from my experience of using the FamilySearch Standard Place-Names facility - and that one does, in theory, offer the ability to swap between languages, though it can come to a grinding halt when trying to swap languages in user extended names.

This is not a criticism of anyone who tries to compile such data - good luck to them, but unless everyone agrees on the parameters, disappointment will ensue.