When entering Event Type for baptism [doop in Dutch], the word is double in the pop-up. See attachment.
It is also double when going to Events in the menu. Performing a filter on either of them gives exactly the same results. Going through all event types by hand it is only once there, I’m sure it is nowhere else. Perhaps this is minimal, but I like to resolve this. AIO64-6.0.8–1
This isn’t a code bug — it’s a translation collision in the Dutch .po file.
Gramps has two distinct built-in event types in English:
- Baptism (gramps/gen/lib/eventtype.py:203)
- Christening (gramps/gen/lib/eventtype.py:210)
In po/nl.po, both are translated to the same Dutch word, “Doop”:
msgid "Baptism"
msgstr "Doop"
...
msgid "Christening"
msgstr "Doop"
So when the event type dropdown is populated and sorted, it shows “Doop” twice — once for the English Baptism type and once for the English Christening type. It’s not an actual data duplicate, and filtering both gives the same results because in the underlying data model they really are two different enum values that just happen to render identically in Dutch.
To fix this you’d need to change the Dutch translation to disambiguate one of them, e.g.:
- Christening → “Kinderdoop” or “Doop (algemeen)”
- keep Baptism → “Doop”
Does that sound correct? If so, the translations are made here: Hosted Weblate
Hm, for me there is a variation in meaning of those words. Like for marriage and wedding.
One is the action ‘water on the head’ (baptism), the other one the result (a person is christened by baptism). I would translate Baptism as Doop and Christening as Doopfeest or Doopdienst. (baptism feast / baptism service)
But perhaps my English is to limited.
Thank you
That would be great if you could make those changes in Weblate. If you are unable, perhaps someone else can.
I wouldn’t know which one to choose. Names for the service vary a lot from church to church.
R.C. would be baptism mass
Protestant has several words for the service (The act is always baptism)
Even keeping it as neutral as possible: a mass is some very different beast then a service. Even if not for an outsider.
There are even possibilities to be baptised outside a service (Emergency baptisms are/were performed at home. Sometimes even by lay people)
And make it even more complicated: The Orthodox churches call the baptism (the act) Mystery.
And as to Adult Christening, this (to me) is the act by which an aldult confirms conversion to christianity. It is still the act (water on head or submerge fully), not the servce or festivity.
Sorry for being so complicated… 
Adult Christening is different than the event Christening which is the event for infants.
I have hacked the nametype.py making Adult Christening, Adult Baptism. Christening has the implied meaning of Naming which would not happen as an adult.
Fundamentally, there is no difference between christening and baptism (see Christening FAQs | The Church of England). it seems to be a matter of local vocabulary tradition.
This “duplication” shows that event types are highly biased towards some implicit culture, Church of England in this case, and translation is extremely difficult because it addresses both the generic event (being recognised as a member of a religious group) and the detailed local denomination.
Thus the “development name” (in the US English source code) is simultaneously not generic enough and too targeted.
I’ll try to provide soon a note on my ideas about event types and how I try to “merge” custom and built-in types.
There always be translation problems. The word Doop might mean Baptism and/or Christening. I have no solution other then to accept this. It would be very complicated to include differences of meaning between languages and/or traditions.
In the Dutch Protestant church there is this notion that the word Doop [baptism] can have several meanings. The act and the service wherein this act is performed. Therefore they might use Doopdienst [baptismal service] to distinguish the service from other type of services. [sunday service, funerial service, ]. Roman Catholic has a very different tradition and thus different conotations.
I don’t think there would be another translation for Christening, we just use Doop.
Regardless of whether there is a functional difference, if there are intentionally different distinct terms in GEDCOM and Gramps then the Translation should have different words to avoid import/export mangling.
If you personally decide they are the same, you can merge the record types. But if you are a translator, please do not make that decision for everyone.
(There is a similar problem with Addon Manager and Plugin Manager being translated as the same name in the French localization. It does not matter that the translator believes the Functionalities should be combined. They are distinctly different parts of the interface, accessed from different entry points and showing different facets of the data. They should have different localizations.)
In this case, one might call a “christening” a naming ceremony or public introduction of a child to a community. And a “baptism” is a preliminary induction to a religion ceremony.
I don’t decide, I am only considering forwarding usage of a software application designed in a definite culture at a specific time to solve some person’s need. This app has proven useful to others (worldwide!) and has to be coerced into local culture.
In Church of England context, baptism and christening are meaningful because they convey the nuances in local church ritual. There is nothing wrong here.
But when you record admission in a congregation somewhere else and at another time, you can’t simply use the same words, translated or not (it is a bit exaggerated but you get the idea).
From my point of vent, types, not only event types, should not be a “simple” linear list. Instead, a hierarchical tree would be better fit. The UI already provides a simplified 2-level tree. For example, we have Religious → Christening, Adult Christening, Confirmation *(I didn’t notice that Baptism is no longer there - v6.0.8). But this layering does not propagate to the encoding.
I’d prefer to have something like:
Religious + Church of England + Baptism
| + Christening
| + Marriage
+ Roman Catholic + …
|
+ Israelite + Bar Mitzvah
| + …
with an encoding such that entering Church of England in a filter would return all records for Baptism, Christening, Marriage, … The number of layers should not be limited.
Another structure could also be proposed:
Religious + Entering + (generic) + Baptism
| + CoE + Christening
| + LDS + (some ordinance)
+ Leaving + (generic) + Burial
+ Christianity + Abjuration
There are many possible schemes and none is better than others. However, this would avoid hesitations like baptism vs. christening.
The main objection is it results in a higher entry step (Gramps is frequently criticised for that by newcomers) and a more complex implementation.
I was very concise in my remark. I don’t try to merge existing built-in types. I’d like filters do manage built-in and custom types the same. That is, instead of filtering on CUSTOM = 0, which retrieves all custom types, regardless of user naming, I’d like the filters to consider the user-allocated encoding (name). I think it possible by a small modification of the type feature. For example, if we allow for 256 types, 0-127 + 255 (UNKNOWN = -1) are reserved for built-in and 128-254 are available for custom. Or with a 16-bit field (in case some DB engines need to have an explicit integer “width”) 0-32767 + 65535 are reserved for built-ins and 32768-65534 for user.
This is only a sketch for the idea. It requires a dedicated UI to create custom types, a DB table to store the custom types and an adaptation to export and above all to import to detect collisions.
not to speak of adults who change religion or confirm their Christianity on a later date. Which might be called Christening (or confirmation)
And then there is the evangelical Christianity who re-baptise a person regardless if they were baptised before. And might call it Regeneration [through baptism]
My main issue here would be that CofE RC do not cover all the Christian
Religous sects within the UK by a long way so it becomes incredibly
complex if you try to subdivide in this manner
phil
You can also christen a vessel or building (or any structure).
In those cases, it is a naming ceremony and possibly a blessing ceremony.
My personal opinion is that the Adult Christening is mislabeled in English and should be Adult Baptism. And that Baptisms (infant/child/adult/deathbed/posthumous) is a ceremonial initial induction into a religion.
However, none of the above is how the terms are defined in the GEDCOM documentation. In that, they seem to (almost intentionally) blur the lines between christening, adult baptism, and baptism. And those docs note that these Event Types are “not LDS” rites. It feels as though there was an internal political struggle of steering committee and these terms were causualties of the battle.
That’s not unusual when standards are defined by groups. People have “agendas” and damn the consequences. Gramps has also settled on compromises that satisfy no one.