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Archiver > GENBOX > 2006-01 > 1137717942


From: "wim prange" <>
Subject: RE: [GENBOX] Use of Identifiers
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:45:42 +0100
In-Reply-To: <000d01c61ba3$76f38d90$0768480c@BONDAV>


Hi David,

This question was left unattended.

When I discovered Genbox, I too pondered about an 'automatic namechange' in
narratives, controlled by the Defining Event for an Identifier. In my
research (in the Netherlands) I am dealing with socalled "farm names": the
surname wasn't a family-name as we know it but actually the name of the farm
where they lived at the time they were mentioned in a source. This has some
'strange' consequences: when the family moved, the surname changed; when a
man married into his in-law's farm, he seems to have taken on his wife's
name, etc. Some people in my file have sometimes used 6 different surnames
throughout their life.

When I would use an automatic namechange in the narrative for these
particular stories, I'm afraid the reader will get hopelessly confused. A
genealogy-report is mostly names anyway and it allready is a real burden to
keep track of all the names, especially when the children are named after
grandparents and other familymembers. When the main character of that part
of the story also changes his or her name after a couple of sentences, I'm
afraid your reader could not make head or tail of it anymore.

In my opinion, a better approach would be to deal with these name-issues
through specific namechange-events, or through using the note-sections for
events where it is relevant. What I do is mention it in notes. When it is
quite obvious what had happened, I do that in the note for an Event. When
the whole story is more complex, I do it in the note for the Individual. I
use the code for namevariant to include the name - [N#] - and create a small
narrative about what happened and when etc. This usually also includes an
explanation about the way I have deduced it with lots of "circumstantial"
evidence.

Hope this helps,

Wim


> -----Original Message-----
> From: David [mailto:]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 9:20 PM
> To:
> Subject: [GENBOX] Use of Identifiers
>
> Some time ago there was some talk about letting us choose the name
> (identifier) we wanted to use on each Census and/or Residence
> event (for a
> particular person). The problem I am having is that most of my U. S.
> genealogy database (females) used their maiden name until
> they were married and then used their husbands' surname until
> they were either divorced or remarried.
>
>
>
> I need some way to make this clear (using Genbox narrative
> reports) in my Census and/or Residence sentence structure.
> Can someone help me with this problem?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
>
>
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