Family Historian User Group

Could anyone advise me on how best to approach name changes by deed poll.

Should the records always be entered as the birth name and any changes added afterwards ?

TIA

Dominic


ID:115

Dominic,
I'm interested in this also because I have an instance of a name change in my wife's ancestors. Whether this name change was ever formalised in any way I do not yet know. Deed poll was only one way of making a name change. Is a deed poll a document that one could get a copy of? If so, then that would give a date for the name change which, as yet, I do not have.
I think I would always enter a person by their birth name as this would then link to the birth/baptism record. I would use any name change document as a source and link it to the relevant person/people and add a note to the name about the name change. For a man who has changed his name descendants will have a different surname but this should not be a problem when printing charts.
Has anyone any other way of dealing with this?

pwe

If you use the All tab or the record window FH will allow multiple Name entries. So if someone name changes you can record multiple names and source each name. You can sequence the name records so that the first name is the most used. So for example a child who is adopted can have both birth name and adopted name with the adopted name first for 'polictical' reasons.

Thankyou Jane, thats something I wasn't aware of.

pwe

Thanks for the reply. All sorted now

I received a question about showing 'second' names on reports:
Here is my reply

> but do not understand how the new name can be made available in say, an individual summary report.

You can add additional lines to the summary report, so for instance to add the 'other name' to the report.
Click add on the report options screen and add with a description of your choice the following expresion.

%INDI.NAME[2]%
This will add the second name, you could put
%INDI.NAME[2]%, %INDI.NAME[3]%

which will show 2 subsequent names.

Jane,
First, sorry I did not post my previous message but sent it to you direct.

FH never ceases to amaze me with its flexibility, there seems to be a way to do almost anything.
Thanks for showing me how to display alternate names in a report. I had found the diagram option for an alternate name to be included in the boxes but so far have not implemented it because of the report problem.

John