Family Historian User Group

Is there a way to make a name suffix such as Jr. or Sr. visible within the Focus, Properties, or Records windows? It seems to be restricted solely to reports.

How to Customise or Print Records Window or Named List Columns tells you how to customise the Records window -- essentially, right click on the records list headers, open the Configure Columns dialog, scroll down to the bottom of the left hand pane to <other>. In the dialog that opens, use the Insert Data Ref button to get help finding the reference you need and expand the Name branch of the tree to find the Suffix (or you might prefer to use the Adorned name.) Give the column the label of your choice. If you use the adorned name, you cannot remove the Individual record column so there will be some duplication.

Introducing the Property Box (A Visual Tutorial) covers customising the Property box. It's a little more complex, so you should definitely watch the video.

I'm not aware of any way to make the suffix visible in the Focus window. If there is, Mike Tate will be along to correct me.

Exactly what is possible depends on how you enter the suffix.

If you use the more (+)... link to open the Names & Titles dialogue the Name Suffix can be entered there.
That uses the Data Reference %INDI.NAME.NSFX% and can only appear in the Property Box and Records Window using the customisations explained by Helen.

If you add the suffix to the main %INDI.NAME% field using the format Forename /Surname/ Suffix then it will appear in all three windows automatically without any customisation. e.g. John /Smith/ Jr.

As you've said the suffix visibility seems to be restricted to reports, I assumed you hadn't included it in the main %INDI.NAME% field (when importing from RM, I believe it ends up in the suffix field). If that's the case, but you want to change to having it as part of the %INDI.NAME% field, you could either do it manually (if there's only a few) or use the Add Name Suffix to Full Name plugin. (It may need a tweak to make it V7 compliant, so don't do that until Mike or I provide a tweaked version or give the go-ahead to use as it stands).

Display Name Suffix On Diagrams, Focus Window, etc (10122) also discusses this topic in more detail, and makes additional suggestions, as does Name shown with Suffix, in general (13111). (The Search button top right will search both the forums and the KnowledgeBase which can be very useful when looking to see if subjects have come up before -- in the 19 years of this forum, most things have come up.)

The 'Add Name Suffix to Full Name' plugin runs OK but with some caveats.

It tells you how many names have been changed but does not list them!
However, in the Records Window click on the Updated column header and they will be listed at the top with today's date.

If both forms of suffix exist such as Name: John /Smith/ Jr. and Name Suffix: MBE then it becomes John Jr. /Smith/ MBE

tatewise wrote: ↑

10 Nov 2021 14:14

The 'Add Name Suffix to Full Name' plugin runs OK but with some caveats.

It tells you how many names have been changed but does not list them!
However, in the Records Window click on the Updated column header and they will be listed at the top with today's date.

If both forms of suffix exist such as Name: John /Smith/ Jr. and Name Suffix: MBE then it becomes John Jr. /Smith/ MBE

Thank you! With that caveat in mind, how would one input a name such as: George Reginald Herbert Jr., 8th Earl of Carnarvon (with the comma intact and sorted properly within Records)?

"8th Earl of Caernarvon" would be a title (in V6 the other option when adding an additional name)

You may want to split this as "Earl of Caernarvon" as the title and then add the "8th" in the subsidiary field (via the all tab) "Descriptor". That might help with sorting.

I agree. '8th Earl of Carnarvon' is not a suffix but an inherited Title, which George Reginald Oliver Molyneux Herbert gained when his father died on 11 September 2001 in Winchester, Hampshire. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Carnarvon and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_He ... _Carnarvon.

So that should be recorded in a standard Title Attribute dated 11 September 2001.
The title refers historically to Caernarfon and is Anglicised to Carnarvon or Caernarvon.

The Name field conventionally holds the person's name registered at birth and George Herbert was not an Earl then but could be suffixed Jr, although his father's name was quite different: Henry George Reginald Molyneux Herbert, 7th Earl of Carnarvon.

If you did enter his Name field as George Reginald Oliver Molyneux /Herbert/ Jr., 8th Earl of Carnarvon then it would usually sort by surname HERBERT first and then by forenames George Reginald Oliver Molyneux, so the suffix plays little part.

tatewise wrote: ↑

10 Nov 2021 18:05

If you did enter his Name field as George Reginald Oliver Molyneux /Herbert/ Jr., 8th Earl of Carnarvon then it would usually sort by surname HERBERT first and then by forenames George Reginald Oliver Molyneux, so the suffix plays little part.

I was thinking more of a sort on "titles"; you probably want all the Earls of Caernarvon together not all the 8th Earls of all sorts of places. Put the "number" in descriptor, e.g. "1st Creation; 8th Earl" as a secondary sort - and hope you do not get above the 9th creation!

Fair point. Also hope you don't get above 9th Earl.
But how many Titles have you in your Project that makes absolute sorting so imperative?
I wonder if the Date can be used to put similarly named Titles in chronological order?

True

In my family file, I don't think I have any (directly related) "titles" - and I have not explored or documented any possible indirect links.

But when entering any form of data, I try to anticipate issues that might arise and I downloaded a Royal Families of Europe Family Tree - which helps with following historical documentaries or programs like Who Do you Think You are, where basically if a researcher can link someone to a "gateway person" and claim descendency through Charles II or Edward III (who both seemed to have put it about) they think they have hit a home run.

But following the aristocracy is made hard by inconsistent use of surnames and you often have to rely on titles (and understand them being created and becoming extinct) to have any hope of following what is going on. And when a title is inherited via a Countess it gets really weird!

Personally I don't have many titles in my tree, mostly just prisoner numbers.

When I have worked on trees which do it's worth remembering that the main titles change over time. So I found it useful to include a title attribute so I could add dates when the titles were inherited or changed. You can easily add a column with the last title to the records window using the [last] index for the value or mark one as preferred and use that one.