Alternative names / Ancestry

[scatchardfamily]

I've been using the Reunion advice of putting 'or' for alternative names, and in some cases have tried to be more specific (really as research aids) to specify where alternative spelling comes from, hence:

Collins or Collings

or sometimes

Elvige (marriage) or Elvidge (burial)

That kind of thing.

Now I find that Ancestry finds some entries confusing and they countenance using the most simple spelling for the purposes of getting hints etc.

Does anybody have any advice?

[mrstucci]

Re: Alternative names / Ancestry

This is what I do when I have an alternative spelling. It's not perfect but it seems to work well with Ancestry. I have found that I need to limit the surnames to 2 different spellings otherwise it is not a pretty sight when viewing in Reunion. Judy

[scatchardfamily]

Re: Alternative names / Ancestry

Many thanks. Issue is there are several alternatives in many cases so limiting makes little sense unless it's specifically for Ancestry.

Either way, I see you've decided not to use 'or', or anything like 'alias' or 'aka'? Did you find out they don't work with Ancestry?

[mrstucci]

Re: Alternative names / Ancestry

Many thanks. Issue is there are several alternatives in many cases so limiting makes little sense unless it's specifically for Ancestry.

Either way, I see you've decided not to use 'or', or anything like 'alias' or 'aka'? Did you find out they don't work with Ancestry?

Right now I am not remembering why I chose to do my alternate spellings with the [ ]. I think the reason was that I liked how it looked, not necessarily how it displayed in Ancestry. I just like the looks of the brackets. lol

[John Meara]

Re: Alternative names / Ancestry

...I chose to do my alternate spellings with the [ ].

I use parentheses (round brackets) to enclose nicknames and alternates in Ancestry, as opposed to "quotation marks". The most commonly used standard on Ancestry appears to be quotation marks for nicknames and parentheses for alternate spellings of formal names.

However when I have tried [square brackets] in the name fields on Ancestry, it brings up a message that the field contains 'unrecognised' characters (or some other wording - cannot recall exactly). So I don't use [...] square brackets there, only in the description fields.

[mrstucci]

Re: Alternative names / Ancestry

I use parentheses (round brackets) to enclose nicknames and alternates in Ancestry, as opposed to "quotation marks". The most commonly used standard on Ancestry appears to be quotation marks for nicknames and parentheses for alternate spellings of formal names.

However when I have tried [square brackets] in the name fields on Ancestry, it brings up a message that the field contains 'unrecognised' characters (or some other wording - cannot recall exactly). So I don't use [...] square brackets there, only in the description fields.

Hi John-I guess I will have to pay a bit closer attention to how my entries look in Ancestry!