Hello,
I’ve made a feature request on the bugtracker (13953), where I said that I would like to have a new option for surname guessing (guess mother’s surname if parents are not married).
@daleathan linked a few other requests which are also in the surname guessing category and I want to start a discussion about which new options we could implement and what we could call them.
Summary of the requests that relate to surname guessing options:
- ID 13953
- posted 2025-08-18, last comment 2025-08-18
- Localization: Germany/Austria, not sure of other countries
- Guess mother’s surname if unmarried, else guess father’s surname
- Option name ideas: “German surname guessing”, “Mother’s name if unmarried, else father’s”
- Note: Sadly I can’t find any official sources for this “naming convention” in Austria/Germany. Nowadays, it is possible to give a child the father’s surname even if the parents are unmarried, but before the 21st century it was most likely that the child got the mother’s name (for example, in my family tree of about 800 Austrian people, only one person got the father’s name even though his parents were unmarried), so this surname guessing option would be the most useful option for someone who does German/Austrian genealogy.
- ID 13887
- posted 2025-06-21
- Localization: Balto-Slavic
- Create a new tab in the settings to add custom name morphologies; users can add gendered surnames; e.g. Kowalska (f.), Kowalski (m.): If father’s name is “Kowalski” and the user adds a daughter, check if “Kowalski” is in a custom morphology entry and then use the female version (Kowalska) of this entry to guess the daughter’s surname.
- Option name idea in the name guessing settings: “Use custom name morphology”
- ID 3913
- posted 2010-05-03, last comment 2010-05-03
- Localization: Czechia, Slovakia
- If a child has a patronymic name, use this name to guess the surname of the father
- I think this should not be one of the surname guessing options because it fits only one specific case (only works if the user creates a father; if he creates a mother or child, nothing can be guessed), maybe it should be an additional checkbox in the settings, we could call the checkbox “Guess father’s surname depending on child’s patronymic” or something like that
- ID 8771
- posted 2015-07-29, last comment 2015-07-30
- Localization: Portuguese-speaking countries
- Two feature requests:
- New guessing option: Combine mother’s and father’s surname, but the mother’s surname should come first (option could be called “Portuguese style”)
- Create a field in the family dialog where the user can enter a “family surname”; when a child is added, his/her guessed surname will be the family surname
- ID 11729
- posted 2020-05-12
- Localization: Sweden
- Two feature requests:
- New guessing option: Similar to Icelandic style, but use Swedish suffixes (for male children: use father’s given name + “sson” (or + “son” if father’s name ends with “s”; for female children the same but with “sdotter”/”dotter”) - could be called “Swedish style”
- If Swedish style is the selected option, guess the father’s given name based on the child’s surname. Problem: How do we know whether, for example, the father’s given name is “Mån” or “Måns” if the child’s surname is “Månsson”? It could be either, since the suffix is either “son” or “sson”.
Please let me know what you think of these new surname guessing options. Which should be implemented and how?
