When I make export in gedcom from Gramps I receive unfamiliar for our region names format. I see this after data is imported into myheritage. I would like see all names (including custom types) and all middlenames (including custom types) as names, not lastnames.
Can anybody show me place in code where this string is formed with names and surnames when GEDCOM is exporting? I will try to research it and maybe fix for myself.
Look at the _person_name method in the Gedcom exporter and the get_gedcom_name method in the Name class.
You can fix it by entering the names in the right place, and that’s the field for given names.
The part of the form that allows multi part names is for surnames only…
Okay, but where middlenames should be located for normal using? Gramps does not have special inputs for middlename
Middlename is not a standard in GEDCOM 5.5.1 nor GEDCOMv7. The _MIDN tag is a nonstandard custom tag used by some US-centric software. I think that the GEDCOM import has some handling for that oddity.
It is part of the Given Name. And the Call Name is assumed to be the 1st word of the given name unless otherwise specified.
Middlename is cultural idiosyncrasy common in the US. Gramps has a few features that guess at the middle name. (Such as the Web Connect Pack)
Another case: Firstname also has only one input which is named “Given”. But very often I found 2,3,4 and even 5 different firstnames. You can answer that alternative names should be used. But in this case I must create a lot of alternative names. And which types will it be? All them will be “birth name”. This is not true because I really dont know if is it so. I dont know which one of these names is true. And maybe two of these names are true - its also possible. Lets discuss such example:
Another the same case but about middlenames.
in 1800:
First name: Annet
Middle name: Petrivna
Last name: Sheschenko
in 1801:
First name: Katrine
Middle name: Petrivna
Last name: Sheschenko
in 1802:
First name: Annet
Middle name: Ivanivna
Last name: Sheschenko
in 1803:
First name: Katrine
Middle name: Ivanivna
Last name: Sheschenko
And I dont know which is true. How structurize it?
One more, I see “patronymic” type in surnames list. But patronymic, I think, this is middlename. Why “patronymic” is among surnames? Looks like this is not custom type
No. In this case, Patronymic is a cultural surname type. (Even though culturally Russian uses a Patronymic elsewhere too.)
There is an Icelandic surname guessing preference that uses Patronymic. So the surname for the son of Edwin is guessed as Edwinsson.
For previous discussions, see:
I’m aware of the problem, and right now, we need to deal with the restrictions of GEDCOM, because that’s the way we can communicate with the sites, including My Heritage. I have my tree there, and on Ancestry, Geneanet, etc.
And when I look at my tree, many names that were registered before the French introduced the civil registry have the patronymic part in the surname. And in our case, most times, it does not have the inflexion that I know from Scandinavian countries, including Iceland, and Russia.
When surnames become habits, which happened much earlier in cities, and in noble families, I move the patronymic part to the given name, because that works best for grouping, even though I know that they’re not real given names, and not middle names either. I know what the middle names in your example mean, and I know that they’re not real middle names.
I have a real middle name, which is Frank. And it looks a bit patronymic, because my father’s given name is Franciscus, meaning Francis. It was registered as a middle name however, and my father has 4 of those. And his call name is Frans, which doesn’t fit well in Gramps either.
I’m fully aware of the problem, and I compromise, because we have nothing better than GEDCOM 5.5.1. The problem was solved in GedcomX, but nobody uses that.
Can you give a reference link to that resolution?
I read somewhere that GEDCOMX is the native transfer format for FamilySearch.
This is a direct link to the person definition, because I think that’s the best starting point. A person can have a whole list of names, in which each item can have a date. And each name is a sequence of name parts, where each part has a type, and you store them in the order that works for the person’s culture or language. That means that you can start with the surname, like Vietnamese do, followed by a middle name (nickname?), and given name. Part types are listed in the document, and the example is inconsistent with the type list, because it uses a Russian name, with a middle type for the middle name, and doesn’t list middle as a name type in the type list.
And I think that I wrote that here, about it being the transfer format for FamilySearch. Programs that talk to the tree, like RootsMagic, must speak GedcomX, and they can do that in json or xml.
Oh, got it. “patronymic” type really interferes with “middlename” when translation into ukrainian. It confused me. Thats why I used middlenames as surnames. But not only. Another reason is that I dont have another place where I could add more middlenames and firstnames. Even if I will use “Given” for pair firstname & middlename this is not solution for me because some people have several names, several middlenames and even their different combinations. And these options dont look as valid alternative names because I really dont know which of them are valid. Hope my problem is clear for you.
Judging by the fact that I don’t use alternate names and mixed first, middle and last names, my decision looks bad. But I can’t even imagine how I could solve this problem by moving it all to alternate names or concat name with middlename. In my opinion, I will have something strange in any case
And what about supporting this format in Gramps and myheritage?
You CAN use the surname fields to handle your patronymic middle names in Gramps.
Given name: Katrine
First surname: Petrivna
Second surname: Sheschenko
The key is to make Sheschenko the Primary surname.
There’s no straight answer, because the meaning of the middle name differs by culture. And in mine it has no use, because most people don’t use it in their everyday lives. They may use their second given name as their call name, or a simplified version of that name, but that’s about it.
What I mean is that people never address me with my middle (2nd give) name like Mikhail Gorbatchov did when he addressed Yeltsin as Boris Nikolajevich.
Although you can do that, so you see persons grouped by their primary surname in Gramps, it’s absolutely useless when you create a GEDCOM file, because in that, the surnames will just be exported as a sequence of names, separated by spaces.
And that’s the reason why I compromise.
And that’s why I say that it’s a cultural issue.
When I read the name Edgar Davids, a Dutch soccer player, I know that Davids was once a patronymic name, so I can classify it as surname with type patronymic. And at the same time, I may have a person in my tree that was baptized as Jan Dirks, and married with the name Jan Dirks Zuiderweg, where Zuiderweg is the surname, and I move Dirks to the given names, or leave it out alltogether. And when I’m lazy, or when I’m confronted with a site that only displays one name, I may choose this form as a compromise, in which I can see part of that persons history.
