Is there a collaborative system/repository setup for places?
Gramps lets you dyamicaly change the place name depending on the date of the event.
E.g. Ireland and Northern Ireland, events before/after 1922.
Antrim, Ireland (Before 1922)
Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK (After 1922)
Things seem to get a bit complex in England where around the 1880s parishes have changed boundaries and counties were formed in their stead.
England for example seems quite complex with its counties
England is divided into 48 ceremonial counties, also known as geographic counties. Many of these counties are based on the 39 historic counties. England is also divided into 84 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, used for local government purposes.
It can be somewhat time consuming, for me at least, to try and find where and when a place should be put into Gramps place system, what it is enclosed by and when.
Wondering if there has been any efforts made to catelog this data in the gramps data structure that is public so we can all add and take from this to save time?
It is not perfect, but I use the Family Search Places database when I create a new Place in gramps. They have the history based on dates and a Wikipedia quote. I have found things that don’t jive which means I have to do more research, but 95% meet my requirements. They have a button to show boundaries which comes in handy. But you are correct, it can get very complex. I usually try and focus on the correct Place name for the date specified which limits the scope.
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I think everybody has to find their own path through this everyone will have/take a different view or path.
Clearly Differentiating for your own purposes the difference between “places” with a physical location namely a church/centre of village and those with none such as a Registration District or Metropolitan County ie Greater Manchester which are purely Administrative constructs created/destroyed/modified at the whim of some bureaucrat
So in my case I stick with Historic counties in the UK as defined by
The Gazetteer of British Place Names https://gazetteer.org.uk/index
Additionally I use the the Nominatim Structure of Openstreet.
So for example if I have birth event registration in Manchester it would occur in the Registration District Chorlton (Administrative Place) which is in the County of Lancashire (Physical Place).
Attached example
Census the original address will be stored as attributes and the Place will be constructed as near as possible to a location on Openstreet with the POST CODE as a reference not GPS. A marriage/baptism/burial in a church/cemetery will have an address a GPS location and be locatable on Openstreet.
Towns, Villages etc will have GPS and usually be determined by the Gazetteer in relation to Historic Counties.
However because I am mainly interested in people not places I try to avoid spending time worrying about the issue.
PS I have in media files images of flags for the counties and they are the first image in my individuals Gallery so on Graphview I can instantly see where a person was born.
phil
I start with the place’s Wikipedia page which I attach to its record under the Internet tab. Much like @Davesellers I too use the FamilySearch Place record (although I only recently discovered it). For dates of the coming and going of counties in the U.S. I use the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.
There is the GetGOV addon for central Europe. Unfortunately for my purposes, it adds in all the administrative offices. If most of my database was focused here up to the present day I would probably use it. But for my purpose I only want the big picture county-like hierarchy.
For non-English countries, I use the endonymn of the place instead of the “English” name. I include the English version as the last alternative name so I can search on it. For the endonymn, I do use the spelling using the Latin alphabet as the displayed name but include their native version as alternates. i.e. Москва, Moscow
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