Family Historian User Group

Nick,
Is there a way to have AS create an alternate name for an existing individual? I haven't been able to figure out how to do that. This is the way I like to handle it if I find a different name in the census than I have as the primary name in FH.
Thanks!
Bill

ID:4752

No, though in the next version which begins beta testing very shortly it is possible to change the primary name. So, for example, if you had an individual that you didn't know the name of previously so had a partial name you will be able to change the name in A.S. and then (optionally) the name will be given a citation to the source too. I did consider adding in support for alternative names but it just makes choosing individuals much more complicated and less 'clean'. I'll consider it for a future version if there appears to be a big demand for it but it won't be soon.

Nick,

That will be a nice feature (being able to change the existing primary name).

As far as alternate names go, I think choosing the person from AS could still be handled by using the existing primary name. I don't really see a need to be able to choose the individual by an alternate name. I was just thinking that it would be nice if there was some way of putting in the actual name from the census and telling AS that this name should be stored in FH as an alternate name with the appropriate citation to the census source. If this could be done in some future release, this would be great. In the meantime I can always manually add the alternate name in FH after the fact.

Thanks!

Yes but it isn't quite that simple - they may already have the name recorded as an alternative name so presumably you would then want to be able to select the existing alternative name and add the citation to that, rather than have the identical alternative name recorded twice. In addition there are nicknames, 'given name used', etc. fields that could potentially be used and I think I would feel obliged to support those if I was to build in this feature.

That makes sense. I'll continue to do it manually.

Thanks!