When would a person ever be left as "UNNAMED"?

[DualPlatform]

I was adding some people, in particular Woman who had Daughter with Known Man, then had Son with Unknown Man. I first added Woman, then Daughter and Son, then Known Man as a spouse. Of course, Daughter and Son were then children of Known Man, which is not right. I then moved Son to the clipboard, created a second spouse of Woman named "Unknown" for Unknown Man (I don't think the software would let me create a person without a name), switched the displayed spouse to Unknown, and moved Son into that family from the clipboard. Not knowing what to do with Unknown, I edited details to delete his first name, and so he became UNNAMED. I note the caution in the manual that says, "You can't remove a person by erasing their name in the Edit Person panel. This will only create problems, such as UNNAMED person/record appearing in charts, reports, etc." and so I went through the process to delete Unknown (now UNNAMED) from the People Sidebar.

I got it the way I wanted in the end but it was rather roundabout (and I'm still not sure what is the right way to enter half-siblings where one parent is unknown). It got me wondering, though: since the software let me delete Unknown's name, leaving it UNNAMED, are there any circumstances when you would leave someone as UNNAMED? Or should you avoid having any UNNAMED?

And, did I have to create a temporary unknown spouse in order to enter a child of Woman unrelated to Known Man?

[SGilbert]

In short, yes, you needed to add an unnamed unwed father in order for the child to have a father.
Personally, I wouls have named him '?' and left him there. Someday, maybe, you'll find a name for Mr. ?

[DualPlatform]

In short, yes, you needed to add an unnamed unwed father in order for the child to have a father.
Personally, I wouls have named him '?' and left him there. Someday, maybe, you'll find a name for Mr. ?

You can add children to just one parent - but only so long as there isn't a spouse. Once you add a spouse, you can't just add a child to one parent (and the first spouse you add to a parent already with children is assumed to be the second parent). The way I would imagine it could work is to change the add person dropdown menu to also offer "Add new family...". And, selecting that would switch away from the existing spouse(s) and child(ren), and at that point you could add children to the one parent.

But I'm not bothered by creating a temporary unknown spouse, adding a child, then deleting the temporary spouse in order to add a child to just one parent who already has a spouse, if that's the right way to do it in the software today.

[Blaise A. Darveaux]

This doesn't apply to unnamed spouses, but I have many unnamed children that were born (still birth or died same day) and, simply, not given a first name. I use all lower case for unnamed indicating that that was not a name (never assume that everyone would know that) and, since they have a surname and belong to a family, I can live with that.

[DualPlatform]

This doesn't apply to unnamed spouses, but I have many unnamed children that were born (still birth or died same day) and, simply, not given a first name. I use all lower case for unnamed indicating that that was not a name (never assume that everyone would know that) and, since they have a surname and belong to a family, I can live with that.

Right, with a child you have to have an unnamed placeholder entry, just to indicate they exist(ed). With a parent, though, it's different - you know they exist(ed), by implication of the child. So for a parent I'm inclined to not have any entry if I don't know anything at all about the person.

[TomRitch]

many unnamed children that were born (still birth or died same day) and, simply, not given a first name.

A century or more ago when infant mortality was high, it was not uncommon to wait until the child live to be a year old or so before giving it a name. This is according to my grandmother, explaining the many unmarked or unnamed graves in the "baby cemetery", as we visited in the 1950s.

[Blaise A. Darveaux]

I am sure the practice of naming children varies between cultures/religions. In the French Canadian/Catholic society that I do most of my research in, the vast majority of children that did not survive past 1 year old were given names when born and given another name when baptized (usually the day of birth or the day after). The much less frequent unnamed children are almost always ones where birth date and death date are identical.