Working on my Swedish heritage I find that ancestors might have had several surnames during their lifetime depending on changing locations, professions, or simple preference. Spellings differ from record to record for an individual’s given names and surname where, in a couple of instances, the variant spellings indicate entirely different names. A further complication is the patronymic naming custom which means surnames changed with each generation and siblings could have different surnames. To help keep track of it all I created a
Names tab in the Individual Property Box.
I tried to collect all the entry fields related to an individual’s name in my
Names tab; see screenshot. It includes the custom attribute
Known As. I had copied the
Known As attribute from the FH Extended Set so I could place it in a fact set I created called, Name Variants. (To distinguish items that I have edited I always add a preceding underscore, so the label for my edited attribute is “_Known As.”)
Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to add Alternate Names to my
Names tab, so I must click More(+)… in the upper right of the Property Box to add alternative names. BUT, what is an Alternate Names entry anyway?? It clearly is not a fact.
• Is Alternate Names simply a FH7 note?
• Are they useful?
• If so, how do I add the entry field to my
Names tab?
tatewise wrote: ↑28 Jul 2022 22:13
So FH V7 supports both the Known As custom Attribute and the NAME_TYPE field.
See the All tab, and right-click on Name to Add Type that can be set to aka.
However, FH does not include that Type detail in its reports by default. and other products may not handle it either.
As suggested, I added a name type and set it to aka. However, as I understand it, only one type can be applied and it is assigned to an individual’s primary name. I use the birth name as the primary name and all the others are variants. I’m looking for a solution that allows entering an individual’s birth, AND married, AND aka names. Maybe I’m back to using attribute or event facts.
Speaking of events, I attempted to follow the suggestion to experiment with a Known As event fact. I created a new AKA event fact, but there was no good place to enter a person’s name. Now that the
Known As attribute exports Okay, I think I’ll stick with that.
Any help with the above appreciated.