Family Historian User Group

Sorry for such a basic query question, but I'm trying to clean up my database by creating a list of individuals who are missing their full name and for whom I only have their initials, so people like Harry S. Truman or J. K. Rowling for example.
For some of them I've entered the initials followed by a full stop (.) and for others just their initials separated by a space.
Is there any easy way to do this please?

Many thanks

Andrew

Andrew, try the attached Individual Name Initials Query.
That relies on the new FH V7 functions =Section(...) and =TextLen(...)
=Section(...) allows sections of Name separated by spaces to be extracted.
=TextLen(...) allows those sections to be tested for their length.

Currently, it only checks Primary Name fields INDI.NAME[1] but could be extended to Alternate Names INDI.NAME[2], etc.

Just as an aside - I'm guessing that Harry S Truman was listed simply as an example of an initialled name that came to mind but in his case the "S" is just "S", it isn't short for anything - when I checked that in Wikipedia, I found an explanation that I'd not seen before:

His middle initial, "S", is not an abbreviation of one particular name, but rather honors both his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, a semi-common practice in the American South

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
So if any of you find such a "name" in that locality, this may be the explanation.

PS - there is then a whole debate as to whether the "S" should be followed by a full stop!

... and if you'd looked a bit further in Wikipedia, Adrian, you would have found a similar explanation about the OP's other example:

Although she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, before her remarriage her name was Joanne Rowling, or Jo. At birth, she had no middle name. Staff at Bloomsbury Publishing asked that she use two initials rather than her full name, anticipating that young boys – their target audience – would not want to read a book written by a woman. She chose K (for Kathleen) as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother, and because of the ease of pronunciation of two consecutive letters.

Although K stands for Kathleen, after her grandmother, I don't think she is ever known as Joanne Kathleen Rowling. I would record her as Joanne Rowling, with an alternate name of J K Rowling.

I suspect Andrew just chose those names as random examples and it is coincidental that they both have an initial that does not expand to a forename.

Thanks, yes I was being a bit mischievous in my examples!

Great trivia questions!

Andrew

Does the Query do what you wanted?

Andrew's "mischievous" examples serve a good purpose. (I think it was intentional, Mike). The point is that sometimes the initial is all there is.

I thought their purpose was as examples of the kinds of names with initials that he wanted a Query to list and I provided that Query.

Sorry Mike

Should have thanked you for your prompt reply - am on lunch at work, so will have to check tonight, and yes Lorna the examples were deliberately chosen for the reasons you've all spotted!

Many thanks again

Andrew

Thanks Mike

It worked a dream and picked up all the cases in my database

Andrew

Thanks again Mike,

Just checking for the middle initials is throwing up additional record matches on Ancestry and Find My Past which are showing additional marriages that are clearly right for my family tree that I was unaware of. Some of this work is showing up individuals I had previously recorded who occasionally used their middle name as their main name, and is helping identify some duplicate individuals

I had a similar lot of research leads when looking at witnesses to marriages some time ago.

Best wishes

Andrew