Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I was playing with the dash search. Is there a reason where it would not include everybody?

I suspect it only searches for the *last* married name for any given woman.

For example, you won't find Elizabeth Taylor when searching for "-Taylor", "-Hilton", "-Wilding", "-Todd", "-Fisher", "-Burton", or "-Warner", but will find her when using "-Fortensky".

[donworth]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

Yeah - dash appears to give you the name that would appear on someone's gravestone (the last married name of a woman). It does not appear to let you search by a prior marriage surname.

I guess I would like to have a way to search for any name that was ever valid for a person. Maybe a + sign could be used. Then it would be easy to generate a list of everyone who was born a Bisher, but also all the spouses of the Bishers by searching on +Bisher. And if you couldn't remember the last marriage for a lady, you could search on any of her names: +Bisher, Betty, +Leffell, Betty, +Swartz, Betty, +Devlin, Betty etc.

Don

[Worrall Researcher]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I follow a suggestion made in this forum years ago: the married name in brackets [Smith] and I am very content with that.

Otherwise i would be very irritated by the long list of Anns, Marys, etc at the top of the name index, with no indication as to which family they belong to. After all, the married women would have used their married name for most of their lives.

I am also troubled by women when I don't know their married name, or the surname of their husband, and therefore, don't know the surname of their children. This seems to happen more often than one would expect when harvesting information from old family letters. However I hesitate to use the woman's maiden name in square brackets for her husband.

[Barnbarroch]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

You MUST NOT put the married name, please - because someone called John Smith can marry a Jane Smith. Someone who sees that will assume, unless they know better, that her father's name was Smith.

And if it was, that's fine.

But if it was really Jones, that is misleading. Just put Unknown or leave it blank.

Jamie.

[Sara]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I, too, use a suggestion that I think was from this list. I put [SMITH, wife of John] which means that I KNOW her name was likely not Smith, and, also, lets me know to whom she was married. It also eliminates all the stray first names and places her with the other Smiths in any listing. As long as we're on this subject: I also use Male or Female for unknown first names.

[kyuck]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I use [SMITH], Peter John's spouse Mary, or
[SMITH], Peter John's spouse ??? if her name is not known, or
[SMITH], Mary Ellen's spouse Fred.
This way they sort directly beneath their spouse,

[s1xc00k]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I take a very simplistic approach throughout my family file - when some piece of information is missing, I don't enter anything.
So if I don't have a spouse's maiden name, I leave her last name field empty.
If I have an illegitimate child and don't have a father's name (as is usually the case, and I've a lot of them), I don't provide a father - not even a dummy one.
And so on.
Reunion is smart enough to permit this without causing confusion.

I like the simplistic approach and have used it myself for many years by leaving the unknown name as blank.

That being said, I did some research recently and now use an approach from Elizabeth Shown Mills:"Professional Genealogy - A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers, and Librarians", edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills (c) 2001 that states "Unknown maiden names may be indicated by substituting editorial brackets (square brackets) for the parentheses and filling those brackets with a single dash or (more clearly) a question mark amid dashes--e.g., Mary [---] Smith or Mary [--?--] Smith."
In the example above from Elizabeth, Smith is the person's married name - there are some emails from rootsweb (I think) covering this topic. Reunion software will display the "[-?-] Smith" entry alphabetically with other "Smith" surname entries in the People sidebar (although if you use the alternate prefix of [--?--], the name will not be correctly sorted).

This [-?-] or [--?--] approach is also covered by Christine Rose's *ProGen* chapter, "Family Histories," (pp. 452-74). Furthermore reinforced by other commentaries; via the web "Based on working with scholarly journals a few years back, there are some recognizable approaches to missing names.
Following NGSQ Style, bracketed em-dashes surrounding a question mark or [--?--]
Following Register Style, five underscores".

Conversely, from "A Proposed Standard for Names, Dates and Places in A Genealogical Database" by Gary Mokotoff, the proposed standard states "Unknown portions of name. If the given name or surname of a person is unknown, but the other portion is known, the unknown portion is represented by a question mark (?). If the name it totally unknown, it is left blank. Examples: Sarah ?, ? Smith."

Lastly, the following list was sourced from the web on alternate ideas;
-Add a year of birth to the name,
-Add the name and dates of the spouse,
-UNKNOWN (mar. name) and derivations thereof,
-Put married name in parenthesis,
-Leave the surname blank,
-Married name in quotes or parenthesis with their first name,
-Use married name but add Mrs.,
-Use three underscores or ???,
-Use classical approaches of --?

[Barnbarroch]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I, too, use a suggestion that I think was from this list. I put [SMITH, wife of John] which means that I KNOW her name was likely not Smith, and, also, lets me know to whom she was married. It also eliminates all the stray first names and places her with the other Smiths in any listing. As long as we're on this subject: I also use Male or Female for unknown first names.

I think [SMITH] is dangerous! It's OK for you, but if the data gets into hands of someone who doesn't know the rule you followed, they might just remove the brackets as superfluous.

I much prefer something makes it clear that you don't know. UNKNOWN or just blank seems good to me.

As for the idea that the wife should be sorted alphabetically close to her husband, I see no logic in that. After all, Mrs. ABEL, n

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I also use a suggestion from this forum—and one that avoids the danger mentioned by the previous contributor. I combine LNU (for last name unknown) with the square brackets. And see how cleverly Reunion handles that!

[theKiwi]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

In the example above from Elizabeth, Smith is the person's married name - there are some emails from rootsweb (I think) covering this topic. Reunion software will display the "[-?-] Smith" entry alphabetically with other "Smith" surname entries in the People sidebar (although if you use the alternate prefix of [--?--], the name will not be correctly sorted).

I've use solely

[--?--]

for unknown surnames for a number of years now, without associating it with the husband's married name, so in Reunion they all sort at the top of the list.

But I've just tried adding a husband's surname to the string so

[--?--] Smith

for example and that correctly sorts with the other Smiths, just as

LNU Smith

and

[-?-] Smith do

Roger

[s1xc00k]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

I've use solely

[--?--]

for unknown surnames for a number of years now, without associating it with the husband's married name, so in Reunion they all sort at the top of the list.

But I've just tried adding a husband's surname to the string so

[--?--] Smith

for example and that correctly sorts with the other Smiths, just as

LNU Smith

and

[-?-] Smith do

Roger

Hi Roger,
When I use [--?--], I find the person is the first name on the list whereas [-?-] seems to be sorted ok, see screen shots.
Any thoughts?
PC

[J. Morrow]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

Hi Roger,
When I use [--?--], I find the person is the first name on the list whereas [-?-] seems to be sorted ok, see screen shots.
Any thoughts?
PC

This unknown name business keeps coming up on here every few years, with few good solutions offered because of the sorting problems.

Years ago, I started putting 8 underlines ______, in place of an unknown given name. For unknown maiden names of spouses I use the husband's surname followed by a single dash and W123456 (no spaces), the husband's Reunion assigned number. In the reverse, when the woman's maiden name is known, and the husband's surname is unknown, I enter the wife's maiden name and -H67890, the wife's assigned number. Using this method keeps the family together in the People sorts, and provides a way to clearly identify where information is missing. Once a report has been generated, you can do a FIND search for -W, or -H, and replace with ________ the entire generated surname for that individual. The unknown given names will also print as ________, so the reader will know what is missing and they have a place to write in the information if they know it. The advantage is that things sort correctly, and if you find one of these generated names out in never-never-land, you can take the number portion and enter it in GO TO and immediately find the related spouse, or parents.

Jim

[theKiwi]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

Hi Roger,
When I use [--?--], I find the person is the first name on the list whereas [-?-] seems to be sorted ok, see screen shots.
Any thoughts?
PC

You're correct - when I tried it this morning I didn't try it on the full index, but a subset of it filtered to a last name.

But having tried it now the

[--?--] xxxx, yyyy

name comes at the start of the index, after all the

[--?--], yyyy

names, whereas the

[-?-] xxxx, yyyy

comes with all the other xxxx names.

Roger

[alan]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

Hi,

I've always adopted the method, when a wife's former name is not known, by showing
her on the family card as e.g;

"Mary Saunders (nee ????)"

In the index it shows up as;

???? (Saunders) Mary

It has always worked well for me.

Alan

[Jan Powell]

Re: Simple query - record spouse name as married or maiden?

Generally, good genealogical practice requires the use of a woman's maiden name when recording her surname. I have a separate fact field for variations on surnames and their spelling, and another fact field for "known as".

For women whose married name is unknown, I use the husband's surname in square brackets. I found I had so many women named Mary (as one example) with Unknown for the surname that I became tangled as to who went with whom, so my square bracket works for me. I don't mind about where they are sorted because, if I want to search, I can search for [ or ]. Similarly for male spouses and children whose last names I don't know. I put their surnames in square brackets. I find this method to be good as it helps as a reminder (if I'm ever at a loose end) to search again.