Different names for same individual

[dlutolf]

AIO64-5.2.3-r1-aa03f5a / Windows 11

By coincidence I realized that there are people that have more than one name. It seems that they came into being in a merge operation, at least there is a mention in the person attributes.
1 NAME Josef Aurelius /Lütolf/
2 TYPE birth
2 GIVN Josef Aurelius
2 SURN Lütolf
1 NAME Johann Aurel /Lütolf/
2 TYPE birth
2 GIVN Johann Aurel
2 SURN Lütolf
1 SEX M
1 BIRT
2 DATE 27 AUG 1740
1 DEAT
2 DATE 28 MAY 1772
1 FACT I11913
2 TYPE Merged Gramps ID
One of the names is Josef, one is Johann. The one in my database is Josef, but when I upload my Gedcom export into Stammbaumdrucker (with which I make my trees) it takes the second (wrong) name. The people there tell me they can’t change which one it takes, it takes the second one.

I do not see the name Johann anywhere in the Gramps program, only in the GEDCOM export. So I do not know how to change it. If I can’t find a way to delete the second name in Gramps, the only idea I have is to export GEDCOM and edit in a text editor and then reimport. Then I lose at least my tags and whatever else I have not thought about yet.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Dieter

[Davesellers]

Have you checked that the alternate name is not listed in the Names tab/section of the Edit Person dialog??

[emyoulation]

The Name Editor for each name (Preferred or Alternative) in the Names tab has important distinctions.

• The Type: of name for the Preferred name is usually of “Birth Name” type for export
• The Date: controls which name is used during different periods of the person’s life

[dlutolf]

Thanks for the quick answer. I did not realize that when I merge, Gramps puts one of the names into the alternatives.

Is there any way of searching for alternative names, so I can clean up my database?

[dlutolf]

you are right, the name is listed there, but I am not sure now where the merges may have put the wrong name in my alternatives.

[dlutolf]

I see now that I can filter for lists of either merged ID associations or people with alternative names. That gives me the same number, which in this case is quite large, over 2000. Is there any way to output name and alternative name side by side to make checking easier? The Gedcom is hard work since the entries are below each other, separated by other entries.

[kku]

There is an advanced tool called SuperTool that can do this easily. Listing alternate names is almost trivial: put “names” in the Expression field and limit the listing by putting “len(names) > 1” in the Filter field.

As an example, in the Gramps sample database there are two people with multiple names:

You can also make the display a bit nicer with an expression like “’ - '.join(names)”:

You can copy the output to the clipboard or save the output to a CSV file.

Information about SuperTool: Addon:Isotammi addons - Gramps and isotammi-addons/source/SuperTool at master · Taapeli/isotammi-addons · GitHub

[dlutolf]

Many thanks. The Super Tool looks very interesting and I definitely need to understand all it can do.

For my particular problem I think what I’m seeing (but please tell me if I’m wrong) is that the tool will show me the people who have alternate names, but not the actual name and alternate name side by side. If I want to process the 2000 + people in my database that have more than one name entry I need to be able to compare the names easily to throw out the ones that were not put in consciously but purely the result of a merge.

But I will study the SuperTool further. I never stumbled across it when I looked at the add-ons but maybe I was not looking closely enough.

[emyoulation]

@dlutolf

I definitely need to understand all it can do.

“all it can do” is practically unlimited. It is one of a couple ways to use Python to call the Gramps Engine without having to wrap in in a lot of interface. (If you are experienced in Python, you might want to also explore the Python Eval gramplet.)

There are a series of example SuperTool scripts linked in the wiki.

About 4 years ago, we started with an introduction in the Discourse article: “Tree vivisection experiments with the Isotammi SuperTool”. And if you read French, Patrice Legoux has a section of his blog sharing SuperTool experiments. That is introduced in another discussion.

@dlutolf

But I will study the SuperTool further. I never stumbled across it when I looked at the add-ons but maybe I was not looking closely enough.

This addon collection is in the Isotammi repository, not the Gramps-Project repository.

[emyoulation]

@dlutolf

For my particular problem I think what I’m seeing (but please tell me if I’m wrong) is that the tool will show me the people who have alternate names, but not the actual name and alternate name side by side.

No, it does show names side by side. It lists the Preferred name followed by any Alternative names (separated by hyphens).

Hyphens might not be the best delimiter for names … considering they can be part of double-barrelled given or surnames. You might want to use an ampersand (&) or bar (|) instead. The list of names uses the the “Surname, Given Suffix” format regardless of the Name Format selected.

In the following script, the “name” was added at the beginning of the “Expressions to display”. It DOES use the Name Format preference. in this case: Title Given "Nickname" SURNAME Suffix.

Here’s the “Copy” clipboarded after Executing the modified script:

I0044,"Dr. Lewis Anderson ""Big Louie"" GARNER VON ZIELIŃSKI Sr","Garner von Zieliński, Lewis Anderson Sr | Garner, Louis | Garner, Louie",Person,GNUJQCL9MD64AM56OH

But, as you can tell from this excerpt from the Reports → Text Reports → Complete Individual Report…, Names can have a lot more information that that default name format does not include.

So you could clone that report and strip out the parts that you don’t need.

[dlutolf]

That sounds great. looks like I just have to get down to work!

[kku]

And if you just want to blindly delete all alternate names you can put this in the “Statements executed for each object” section:

if len(names) > 1:
    person.set_alternate_names([])
    db.commit_person(person, trans)

Make a backup first

[dlutolf]

Thanks, but that won’t work since I do not know what the merge put into alternate. Some of those names are wrong or incomplete. I won’t get around looking at each one and in many cases confirming with the original source (church records).

Do we know what the logic is for setting the alternate? Is that always the newer ID?

[emyoulation]

@dlutolf

Do we know what the logic is for setting the alternate? Is that always the newer ID?

You make a choice of the resultant person during the Merge. (The following Person and Family merge dialogs are not typical. The people involved are so wildly different that you’d never merge them. But that difference is easier when describing which piece of data takes precedence. This also illustrates that Gramps applies no safeguard logic in a merge. The merge process just does what you tell it to do.)

Merging people - Gramps (wiki article expanded)

Merge term added to the Gramps Glossary. It also links the orphan wikipage.