During genealogical research, it’s quite common to encounter situations where surnames might change their spelling over time. This can be due to historical, cultural, or linguistic reasons. Typos in old records, migration and assimilation, or simply inconsistency in spelling can lead to one surname having several variations.
For instance, the surname “Smith” might have variations like “Smithe” or “Smyth”. If a researcher is only aware of one of these spellings, they might miss out on crucial details or connections associated with the other variations.
My proposal is to develop a feature that allows grouping such surname variants together. When searching for one variant, the system would automatically consider the other associated spellings, helping in retrieving more relevant results.
Example: If we group “Smith”, “Smithe”, and “Smyth” as related spellings, then searching for “Smith” would also yield results for “Smithe” and “Smyth”.
Let’s discuss this idea. I’m curious about the community and developers’ thoughts. Do you think such a feature could be beneficial? What technical challenges might arise during its implementation?
One of the things to remember, creating a Group As override does NOT alter the underlying information in a person’s record.
And there are two major decisions.
Which names should be grouped together.
Simmon, Simmons ??
Which name do you display as the primary.
Smith (Smithe, Smyth, Smythe) or
Smyth (Smythe, Smith, Smithe)
The other thing to consider is how you sort your database.
The default is Surname, Given. But in this scenario, “Smith, John” and “Smyth, John” will not be grouped together. Within the overall “Smith (Smithe, Smyth, Smythe)” grouping all the Smith’s will sort and then all the Smyth’s.
In this case, setting your default display name to Given Surname becomes a more desirable option all around.
Not for your all database surnames, and not for the display, but just for these grouped surnames sort order. On the same grouping tab you have a sort order field you can use to sort that specific group with the Given Surname order.
Something cool would be to have that default sorting option for grouped surnames in preferences if no order is defined in the sorting field in names editor.
Ideally Gramps should have a default Display name and a different default Sort. I have not filed a feature request.
In the Name editor, you can override independently the default sort order and the display name.
My actual display name setting is Title Given "Nickname" Surname, Suffix This covers most records. When needed, individual records get their own display name.
For sort, I am giving all records the override option Given. This is easier than you may think. Using father’s surname guessing, the sort override follows to all children when added. The only times I need to manually set the override for a new record is when adding a spouse. The other time is when adding another name record to a person. So far, I have not needed to give a name record a different sort other than Given.
Could this be done by creating another rule? A Grouping search?
The Smith/Smythe/Smithe/Schmidt is not the best example because that grouping is simply handled with a SoundEx phonetic algorithm filter. (Although, as an international tool, we really need a Double Metaphone matching feature.)
Another option would be to add “Grouped Surname” to the list of optional inputs in the “People with the <name>” filter rule. The rule allows for partial entry, as well as regex.
I’m not sure guys I understand you fully, but it seems that to solve my problem, I have to create filter-rules for each surname group. For example, if I want to find all the people who are grouped under: Smith/Smythe/Smithe/Schmidt, I would need to create a person filter with separate rules for each surname, using OR conditions between these rules.
I think I expected something that could conduct a similar search without the necessity to create such filters for each surname group. Let’s imagine that the system, by default, creates filters for all groups with the rules I’ve described above, however, these filters aren’t listed in the filter dropdown; they are simply used by default . I understand this might sound a bit strange, but it’s another way to explain precisely what I’m expecting, which I find a bit lacking in the search functionality.
For example with a filter which would ask to select a group name in a dropdown list of all groups value.
After selecting one group the filter would search for all names in keys for that group.
. I understand this might sound a bit strange, but it’s another way to explain precisely what I’m expecting, which I find a bit lacking in the search functionality.