Data entry standard formats?

[Donald Newcomb]

Up front, I'd like to appologize if this is a FAQ. I did a Google search for
this and did not find anything that was particularly helpful.

I'd like to know if anyone has developed any standards for how you enter
names of people who are not named according to the usual "John Quenton
Smith" (first, middle, family) naming convention. A few examples are:

James Du Harcourt De St. Hilary
Maria Ybanez de ERDOIZA y de ARANDIA (Spanish/Basque polynomal surname)
Eudes/Otto of Poitier Duke of Aquitaine (no real surname, given name
has variations)
John "Lackland" Plantagenet King of England (Is his surname "Lackland",
"Plantagenet" or "England"?)
Marcus Aurelius Marci f. Quinti n. tribu Galeria Antoninus Pius, domo
Caesaraugusta (Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius)

I'd also like to mention that I absolutely abhor the practice common in
Ancestral File of sticking the "de", "of" etc behind the given names, so
that the first example above becomes,

St. Hilary / James Du Harcourt De

Or worse yet giving any king or prince the name of his country,

England / John "Lackland" Plantagenet King of

Not that my feeling in the matter amount to a hill of beans. I admit that I
have entered these type names using every possible method and it does make
it hard, when surnames are entered either as "de St. Hilary" or "St. Hilary"
or "Saint Hilary".

My genealogy program does allow a prefix, given name, surname and postfix.
So I can enter names in the form,

King / John "Lackland" / Plantagenet / of England or
Professor / John Quenton / Smith / P.H.D.

Suggestions?

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[singhals]

Donald Newcomb wrote:

Up front, I'd like to appologize if this is a FAQ. I did a Google search for
this and did not find anything that was particularly helpful.

I'd like to know if anyone has developed any standards for how you enter
names of people who are not named according to the usual "John Quenton
Smith" (first, middle, family) naming convention. A few examples are:

James Du Harcourt De St. Hilary
Maria Ybanez de ERDOIZA y de ARANDIA (Spanish/Basque polynomal surname)
Eudes/Otto of Poitier Duke of Aquitaine (no real surname, given name
has variations)
John "Lackland" Plantagenet King of England (Is his surname "Lackland",
"Plantagenet" or "England"?)
Marcus Aurelius Marci f. Quinti n. tribu Galeria Antoninus Pius, domo
Caesaraugusta (Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius)

I'd also like to mention that I absolutely abhor the practice common in
Ancestral File of sticking the "de", "of" etc behind the given names, so
that the first example above becomes,

St. Hilary / James Du Harcourt De

*THIS* I can explain -- In a time known as "Before Computers", the
prefix "de" wasn't alphabetized; de St. Hilary appeared as "de St.
Hilary" in the "S" section of indexes. Teaching a computer program
which letters to ignore in alphabetization is more bother than it's
worth, so if you type "de St. Hilary" the computer puts him in the "D"
section. Same thing happens with "van", "von" "zu", "ibn" and so on.

I don't LIKE it, but I know why it's happening. (g)

Or worse yet giving any king or prince the name of his country,

England / John "Lackland" Plantagenet King of

Not that my feeling in the matter amount to a hill of beans. I admit that I
have entered these type names using every possible method and it does make
it hard, when surnames are entered either as "de St. Hilary" or "St. Hilary"
or "Saint Hilary".

St. has *ALWAYS* been indexed as if it were spelt out in full, so Saint
Hilary is correct. Again, making a computer remember the difference
between St. (for saint) Hilary and St. (for Strauss) Hillary is more
bother than it's worth. (Actually, I think it falls well inside the
definition of Artifical Intelligence, and so one day might well be
easy-to-do.)

My genealogy program does allow a prefix, given name, surname and postfix.
So I can enter names in the form,

King / John "Lackland" / Plantagenet / of England or
Professor / John Quenton / Smith / P.H.D.

Suggestions?

John "Lackland"/Plantagenet/ in the name field, with King of England
and his regnal dates in the comments/notes/more_about fields.

Or John "lackland" Plantagenet// because they didn't have/use surnames
back then.

Spanish names -- look in the parish registers or the Spanish phone book
and go-thou-and-do-likewise. Portuguese names, repeat, but with
Portuguese phone books and registers. [If the Spanish phone books put
"Maria Ybanez de ERDOIZA y de ARANDIA " under "A" then you rearrange it
so the computer will put it under "A"; if she'd be under "E", you're
good to go by moving the "de".

After all the computer doesn't actually "know" that "ARANDIA, Maria
Ybanez de ERDOIZA y de" isn't actually her name.

FWIW.

Cheryl

[Bob Velke]

Cheryl said:

*THIS* I can explain -- In a time known as "Before Computers", the prefix
"de" wasn't alphabetized; de St. Hilary appeared as "de St. Hilary" in the
"S" section of indexes. Teaching a computer program which letters to
ignore in alphabetization is more bother than it's worth, so if you type
"de St. Hilary" the computer puts him in the "D" section. Same thing
happens with "van", "von" "zu", "ibn" and so on.

With The Master Genealogist, there is a Surname field which controls the
way it displays and a Sort Surname field which controls the way that it
sorts. It is very simply to display "de St. Hilary" and sort it in the "S"
section of the index.

Bob Velke
Wholly Genes Software
http://www.WhollyGenes.com

[Donald Newcomb]

"Bob Velke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

With The Master Genealogist, there is a Surname field which controls the
way it displays and a Sort Surname field which controls the way that it
sorts. It is very simply to display "de St. Hilary" and sort it in the
"S"
section of the index.

I think if I were to write a genealogy program I'd have something like this.
Maybe a non-printing character you can add just before the index point for
sorting. My understand of TMG is that it allows the genealogist to do just
about anything: same-sex unions, custom relationships, etc.

But back to the issue at hand. We still have not figured out how to enter
"surnames" that are not "surnames", such as a Roman gens or agnomen or maybe
a royal "surname" (e.g Lackland) vs the dynastic name (e.g. Plantagenet). As
long as it's only me and my database, I can do it the way I want but when
databases are shared it creates confusion.

Similar problems come from Welch names like "ap Owen" and "verch Owen" but
most people would alphabetize MacDonald under M, not D, even though at one
time Michael MacDonald would be the son of Donald.

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[A. Gwilliam]

I can't confirm this for a fact, but I've heard that Icelandic
telephone directories are alphabetised by first name, as surnames are
true patronymics.

--
Andrew

[Bob Velke]

Donald said:

But back to the issue at hand. We still have not figured out how to enter
"surnames" that are not "surnames", such as a Roman gens or agnomen or maybe
a royal "surname" (e.g Lackland) vs the dynastic name (e.g. Plantagenet).

I don't understand why you think my answer was unresponsive to the
issue. As I said, in TMG, you can enter "Owen" in the Sort Surname field
so that it sorts correctly. Then you can enter "ap Owen" in the Surname
field. Or you could enter "ap" in the Pre-Surname field and "Owen" in the
Surname field if that makes you more comfortable. In addition to the
fields that control sorting, you can break each name into up to seven
pieces and call them whatever you like.

As long as it's only me and my database, I can do it the way I want but when
databases are shared it creates confusion.

Well, sure. If you use one of the more capable programs and try to share
it with someone who is using one of the least capable, then there are
always going to be problems. You can emphasize data integrity and
encourage others to do the same or you can emphasize portability and reduce
your data entry standards to the lowest common denominator.

Bob Velke
Wholly Genes Software
http://www.WhollyGenes.com

[Bob Velke]

Donald and I said:

But back to the issue at hand. We still have not figured out how to enter
"surnames" that are not "surnames", such as a Roman gens or agnomen or maybe
a royal "surname" (e.g Lackland) vs the dynastic name (e.g. Plantagenet).

I don't understand why you think my answer was unresponsive to the
issue. As I said, in TMG, you can enter "Owen" in the Sort Surname field
so that it sorts correctly. Then you can enter "ap Owen" in the Surname
field. Or you could enter "ap" in the Pre-Surname field and "Owen" in the
Surname field if that makes you more comfortable. In addition to the
fields that control sorting, you can break each name into up to seven
pieces and call them whatever you like.

So, I should clarify, you can call one of the name fields "Royal Name" (or
"Dynasty Name" or whatever) and put whatever value you want there.

Bob Velke
Wholly Genes Software
http://www.WhollyGenes.com

[[email protected]]

Donald Newcomb wrote:

But back to the issue at hand. We still have not figured out how to enter
"surnames" that are not "surnames", such as a Roman gens or agnomen or maybe
a royal "surname" (e.g Lackland) vs the dynastic name (e.g. Plantagenet). As
long as it's only me and my database, I can do it the way I want but when
databases are shared it creates confusion.
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

Remember- fields in genealogy programs are just that-fields to be used
by the user. What those fields are called is neither here or there as
long as one is consistant in HOW they are used.

If a person doesn't have a surname then so be it- "Surname" could be
used for gens, House Name, or anything else. More important is can the
data be manipulated to produce meaningful output.


As an aside I'd enter King John as:
Given Name: John
Surname:
Suffix: King of England

He NEVER used Plantaganet - that was used by later people; and
"Lackland" was merely discriptive and never- to my knowledge-used in
any offical document.

--
The Verminator

[Hugh Watkins]

A. Gwilliam wrote:

I can't confirm this for a fact, but I've heard that Icelandic
telephone directories are alphabetised by first name, as surnames are
true patronymics.

mostly for example foreigners hav ephones too

Danish surnses ending in -sen comy from 15 or so popular first names
so the fromat is

surname, first names, occupation or status
(noblr titles ahve been abolished except for the monarchy

and I would expect the Icelandic phone book to include occupations too

http://www.pta.is/default.asp?cat_id=101


Póst- og fjarskiptastofnun
can't find the book

Hugh W

[Denis Beauregard]

Le Sun, 5 Feb 2006 13:44:38 -0600, "Donald Newcomb"
<[email protected]> écrivait dans soc.genealogy.computing:

"Bob Velke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
With The Master Genealogist, there is a Surname field which controls the
way it displays and a Sort Surname field which controls the way that it
sorts. It is very simply to display "de St. Hilary" and sort it in the
"S"
section of the index.


I think if I were to write a genealogy program I'd have something like this.
Maybe a non-printing character you can add just before the index point for
sorting. My understand of TMG is that it allows the genealogist to do just
about anything: same-sex unions, custom relationships, etc.

I has seen one French program which just skips words when they begin
with a lower case. So, James du Harcourt de St. Hilary is sorted
as Harcourt de St. Hilary

In my own homemade (and limited to display) database, I enter names as

HARCOURT de SAINT-HILARY (du)

and it will either print

spouse of James du HARCOURT de SAINT-HILARY
or
HARCOURT de SAINT-HILARY (de), James, born xx, dead yy

Obviously, I have to find all the possible keywords.

But back to the issue at hand. We still have not figured out how to enter
"surnames" that are not "surnames", such as a Roman gens or agnomen or maybe
a royal "surname" (e.g Lackland) vs the dynastic name (e.g. Plantagenet). As
long as it's only me and my database, I can do it the way I want but when
databases are shared it creates confusion.

Similar problems come from Welch names like "ap Owen" and "verch Owen" but
most people would alphabetize MacDonald under M, not D, even though at one
time Michael MacDonald would be the son of Donald.

Since I have no very far Macs, I enter them as MacDonald but if I have
a huge Scottish/Irish database with a lot of Mac and Mc, I would
likely enter sort them as Donald and would detect that prefix.

But for a general purpose program, I would use the French method, i.e.
mac Donald and mc Donald.


Denis

[Gjest]

A. Gwilliam wrote:

I can't confirm this for a fact, but I've heard that Icelandic
telephone directories are alphabetised by first name, as surnames are
true patronymics.

True, check http://www.simaskra.is

[Gjest]

Hugh Watkins wrote:

A. Gwilliam wrote:
I can't confirm this for a fact, but I've heard that Icelandic
telephone directories are alphabetised by first name, as surnames are
true patronymics.

mostly for example foreigners hav ephones too

Danish surnses ending in -sen comy from 15 or so popular first names
so the fromat is

surname, first names, occupation or status
(noblr titles ahve been abolished except for the monarchy

and I would expect the Icelandic phone book to include occupations too

yes, and they also list your e-mail adress and your website in addition
to both your landline and mobile telephone numbers (if you ask them to)

http://www.pta.is/default.asp?cat_id=101


Póst- og fjarskiptastofnun
can't find the book

http://www.simaskra.is

[Donald Newcomb]

"Bob Velke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

Donald said:

But back to the issue at hand. We still have not figured out how to enter
"surnames" that are not "surnames", such as a Roman gens or agnomen or
maybe
a royal "surname" (e.g Lackland) vs the dynastic name (e.g. Plantagenet).

I don't understand why you think my answer was unresponsive to the
issue. As I said, in TMG, you can enter "Owen" in the Sort Surname field
so that it sorts correctly. Then you can enter "ap Owen" in the Surname
field. Or you could enter "ap" in the Pre-Surname field and "Owen" in the
Surname field if that makes you more comfortable. In addition to the
fields that control sorting, you can break each name into up to seven
pieces and call them whatever you like.

As long as it's only me and my database, I can do it the way I want but
when
databases are shared it creates confusion.

Well, sure. If you use one of the more capable programs and try to share
it with someone who is using one of the least capable, then there are
always going to be problems. You can emphasize data integrity and
encourage others to do the same or you can emphasize portability and
reduce
your data entry standards to the lowest common denominator.

I guess my point is, "That's good for TMG users." but until everyone uses
TMG, or an equally capable program, how are we going to handle the problem?
This is not just a matter of a surname like "ap Owen" or "de St. Legier" but
how do you organize the names of people who really don't have what we'd call
a surname? "King John of England" Should I alphabetize him as "John" or
"England"? "Anna Porphyrogenita" daughter of Romanus II. "Porphyrogenita" is
an angomen, not a surname. How do I alpahbetize her?

I think what I was hoping to find was a SOP for entering different types of
names into a standard genealogy program. Or even an SOP for which name to
pick for sorting. E.g.
Roman names: Sort on gens. Agnomen, if any, goes after gens in surname
field.
Welch names: Sort on father's name.
Kings: Sort on country
Basque names: Sort on patranomic. Drop "de" befor and "y" between names.
Amerindian names: (e.g. "Soft Rabit") Treated as a single given name.
Etc.

Right now, I'm so confused that I'm willing to play "follow the leader" even
if it offends my "purist" inclinations.

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[Donald Newcomb]

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

Remember- fields in genealogy programs are just that-fields to be used
by the user. What those fields are called is neither here or there as
long as one is consistant in HOW they are used.

What I was hoping to find was a standard way of entering non-standard
(according to our current standards) names. A standard way of using those
fields.

If a person doesn't have a surname then so be it- "Surname" could be
used for gens, House Name, or anything else. More important is can the
data be manipulated to produce meaningful output.

OK....

As an aside I'd enter King John as:
Given Name: John
Surname:
Suffix: King of England

He NEVER used Plantaganet - that was used by later people; and
"Lackland" was merely discriptive and never- to my knowledge-used in
any offical document.

Which is exactly why I chose a Plantagenet. They didn't use the name (except
Goffery) but it has been applied to the dynasty by others. But without some
differentiation (nickname, dynasty, etc) I'll end up with 100 Johns that all
sort together. If we are absolutely purist about this, his given name will
be "John", surname will be blank, occupation will be "King of England" (from
April 6, 1199 to October 18, 1216), AKA is "John Lackland" and I don't quite
know what to do with "Plantagenet". But sooner or later we have to be
practical and figure out which name to use to alphabetize him.

I've had to come up with my own convention for married women who's maiden
name is unknown. Mrs. Mary Smith is entered as "*Smith". I didn't want to
do this but I wanted a way to quickly show that it wasn't her maiden name
and still differentiate her from all the other Marys with no surname.


--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[Bob Velke]

Donald said:

I think what I was hoping to find was a SOP for entering different types of
names into a standard genealogy program.

If you want a good and long-term solution, then you can do your part to
evolve that "standard." If you want a short-term solution, then you can
focus on kludging your current program to do something it was not designed
to do. But know this: you can't have both so choose carefully.

The developers of those "standard" programs want to know where your
priorities lie too.

Bob Velke
Wholly Genes Software
http://www.WhollyGenes.com

[Doug McDonald]

Bob Velke wrote:

Donald said:

I think what I was hoping to find was a SOP for entering different
types of
names into a standard genealogy program.

If you want a good and long-term solution, then you can do your part to
evolve that "standard." If you want a short-term solution, then you can
focus on kludging your current program to do something it was not
designed to do. But know this: you can't have both so choose carefully.

The developers of those "standard" programs want to know where your
priorities lie too.

Well then, my #1 pet peeve: there is, in no program I
otherwise like, a special field for "locality" or "where lived"
for a person. Medieval English or Scottish people were very
frequently described as "of place X" or "in place Y". I currently
use Legacy, which has a "suffix" field where I stuff them, but
it gets rather large if ends up like "of Whytree, younger of Ballindalloch",
and there are worse cases, expecially if they are "of" several
places and Baron or Earl of somewhere else. I am implying here
that this is part of the (extended) name, not something that can
be happily stuffed in as a bogus "event".

Doug McDonald

[A. Gwilliam]

Donald Newcomb wrote:

Welch names: Sort on father's name.
Now, that's the second time! It's "Welsh", not "Welch".

--
Andrew

[Leif B. Kristensen]

Doug McDonald skrev:

Well then, my #1 pet peeve: there is, in no program I
otherwise like, a special field for "locality" or "where lived"
for a person.

That is formally known as a toponym. In eg. old Norwegian naming
practice, that is an integral part of the name along with or instead of
the patronymic. There were very few real surnames. A man named Peder,
with a father named Jon and living at a place called Berg, would be
called Peder Jonsen, Peder Berg or maybe, on a lucky day, Peder Jonsen
Berg. Of course, if he moved to the neighbouring farm Dal, he would be
called Peder Jonsen, Peder Dal or maybe, on a lucky day, Peder Jonsen
Dal.

The main reason for the decomposition of a name is of course to
facilitate searching in the database. And in a patronymic culture, when
I want to search for the father of a Marthe Andersdatter (literally
"daughter of Anders"), I'm looking for a guy with the given name
Anders. As most "international" or Anglo-American genealogy software
will force you into abusing the "surname" field for patronyms, that
same software will invariably make the blind, but preposterous,
assumption that the father has the surname "Andersdatter" as well.

Eventually I got fed up with American genealogy programs that treat the
surname as a God-given fact of life, so I wrote my own. My name record
has the following input fields: Given, Patronym, Toponym, Surname,
Occupation, Epithet. Every one of those fields may be used to identify
a person living in a mainly surname-free culture.

But I believe that the most important part of doing good genealogy is a
meticulous copying of the source excerpts. A citation like "page 8"
just doesn't do it for me anymore. I want the whole text, and maybe an
additional note if the text was hard to read, or whatever. So, I have
implemented a tree-like source table like the one suggested by the
Gentech GDM, and the output is basically a concatenation of strings.
Even in my primitive implementation, without even a collapsible list
view, this system is amazingly easy, flexible, and powerful.

You can read more about it at <http://solumslekt.org/forays/blue.php>.
This text is a little outdated as I'm more occupied with doing
practical genealogy than data modelling at the moment. I will write an
update eventually, and probably a follow-up or two on the practical
implementation.
--
Leif Biberg Kristensen
http://solumslekt.org/

[Doug McDonald]

Leif B. Kristensen wrote:

Doug McDonald skrev:

Well then, my #1 pet peeve: there is, in no program I
otherwise like, a special field for "locality" or "where lived"
for a person.

That is formally known as a toponym.

Not necessarily. There are true toponyms and then there
are just plain addresses which seem part of a name. Typically,
in the time period I'm talking about, English or Scottish
people often have both a surname and an attached locality which
is not a toponym, while Spanish people have real toponyms,
or in latter days surnames which derived from toponyms. English
or Scottish locality tags almost never mutated into surnames,
unlike Spanish or even Norman French who lived in England. So
in England (but seldom Scotland) you see Somebody de Somewhere
of Somewhere else, the de Somewhere typically being in France,
a surname mutated from a toponym, the of Somewhere in England.




Doug McDonald

[Donald Newcomb]

"Leif B. Kristensen" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

That is formally known as a toponym. In eg. old Norwegian naming
practice, that is an integral part of the name along with or instead of
the patronymic. There were very few real surnames. A man named Peder,
with a father named Jon and living at a place called Berg, would be
called Peder Jonsen, Peder Berg or maybe, on a lucky day, Peder Jonsen
Berg. Of course, if he moved to the neighbouring farm Dal, he would be
called Peder Jonsen, Peder Dal or maybe, on a lucky day, Peder Jonsen
Dal.

This is also true of mid-eastern names.

The main reason for the decomposition of a name is of course to
facilitate searching in the database. And in a patronymic culture, when
I want to search for the father of a Marthe Andersdatter (literally
"daughter of Anders"), I'm looking for a guy with the given name
Anders. As most "international" or Anglo-American genealogy software
will force you into abusing the "surname" field for patronyms, that
same software will invariably make the blind, but preposterous,
assumption that the father has the surname "Andersdatter" as well.

Also true for Hispanic names, where the child of Mr. Rodriguez and Ms.
Velasquez is "Rodriguez y Velasquez" This becomes somewhat bizarre with
Basques, where the surnames are (almost) always toponyms. You get "last
names" like "de Undabarrena y de Ochandategui" which will overflow the
"surname" field on most programs. I've just dropped the "de" and "y" on most
of the Basques in my database just to make it more simple. At least in this
case the surnames still alphabetize well in the paternal line. Older Spanish
names alternated from generation to generation just like Scandinavian names.


--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[Donald Newcomb]

"Doug McDonald" <mcdonald@SnPoAM_scs.uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

unlike Spanish or even Norman French who lived in England. So
in England (but seldom Scotland) you see Somebody de Somewhere
of Somewhere else, the de Somewhere typically being in France,
a surname mutated from a toponym, the of Somewhere in England.

Both of my paternal grandparents had English surnames that started out as
toponyms:
Newcomb - of the new valley.
Childerston - of the land of the younger children. (Place for those who
didn't inherit the main place.)

No one today has any idea where these places were located. But the point is
that there are many, many English names that began as toponyms but
transmogrified into surnames. Anything that ends in "by", "ton", "kirk",
"comb" or "ford", just to name a few.

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[Donald Newcomb]

"A. Gwilliam" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

Donald Newcomb wrote:
Welch names: Sort on father's name.
Now, that's the second time! It's "Welsh", not "Welch".

Sorry. It is in my Funk & Wagnalls as an alternate spelling of Welsh.

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[A. Gwilliam]

Donald Newcomb wrote:

Also true for Hispanic names, where the child of Mr. Rodriguez and Ms.
Velasquez is "Rodriguez y Velasquez"

If I recall correctly, Iberian surnames in -es and -ez are generally
patronymic in origin. Hence, Rodriguez means "son of Rodrigo", and so
forth. I don't know if this usage is considered to be due to Germanic
(Vandal) influence.

--
Andrew

[A. Gwilliam]

Donald Newcomb wrote:

"A. Gwilliam" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Donald Newcomb wrote:
Welch names: Sort on father's name.
Now, that's the second time! It's "Welsh", not "Welch".

Sorry. It is in my Funk & Wagnalls as an alternate spelling of Welsh.

Only historically. As with "Scotch", its use is generally now
deprecated.

--
Andrew

[Donald Newcomb]

"A. Gwilliam" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

Donald Newcomb wrote:
Also true for Hispanic names, where the child of Mr. Rodriguez and Ms.
Velasquez is "Rodriguez y Velasquez"

If I recall correctly, Iberian surnames in -es and -ez are generally
patronymic in origin. Hence, Rodriguez means "son of Rodrigo", and so
forth. I don't know if this usage is considered to be due to Germanic
(Vandal) influence.

This is correct. At one time Sancho Garces(z) would be the son of Garcia
Rodgeguez who was the son of Rodrego Something. The only difference between
that and the Nordic *son was that it was the same for sons and daughters.
Later on the patronomic names were "fixed" into surnames. This is similar to
the WELSH fixing on Jones, Williams, Owens, etc. As I said elsewhere, the
Basque don't follow this system.

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

--
Donald R. Newcomb
DRNewcomb (at) attglobal (dot) net

[Steve Hayes]

On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:24:45 -0600, Doug McDonald
<mcdonald@SnPoAM_scs.uiuc.edu> wrote:

Well then, my #1 pet peeve: there is, in no program I
otherwise like, a special field for "locality" or "where lived"
for a person. Medieval English or Scottish people were very
frequently described as "of place X" or "in place Y". I currently
use Legacy, which has a "suffix" field where I stuff them, but
it gets rather large if ends up like "of Whytree, younger of Ballindalloch",
and there are worse cases, expecially if they are "of" several
places and Baron or Earl of somewhere else. I am implying here
that this is part of the (extended) name, not something that can
be happily stuffed in as a bogus "event".

I usually put it on the first line of the notes field.

"Lawyer of Putsonderwater".


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Steve Hayes]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2006 17:43:39 -0600, "Donald Newcomb"
<[email protected]> wrote:

"Doug McDonald" <mcdonald@SnPoAM_scs.uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
unlike Spanish or even Norman French who lived in England. So
in England (but seldom Scotland) you see Somebody de Somewhere
of Somewhere else, the de Somewhere typically being in France,
a surname mutated from a toponym, the of Somewhere in England.

Both of my paternal grandparents had English surnames that started out as
toponyms:
Newcomb - of the new valley.
Childerston - of the land of the younger children. (Place for those who
didn't inherit the main place.)

No one today has any idea where these places were located. But the point is
that there are many, many English names that began as toponyms but
transmogrified into surnames. Anything that ends in "by", "ton", "kirk",
"comb" or "ford", just to name a few.

And then, of course, there is "of that ilk".


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk