Suggestions on where to enter Indian names?

[foosdiva]

I’ve only been using this for a couple of months, but need to figure out where to enter someone’s indian name before there’s so many people it will take me forever to fix. How to enter names for women still has me in a tizzy. I have gone to many different places reading in the manual and it’s very confusing. With Indians, they could have five different names. They could have just their indian (specific to that certain tribe) name which is just one name. A lot of times it’s their indian name plus a surname or given/sur plus indian.

If i added someone’s name as their preferred & forgot and i was searching another name I had entered, is there a way where you can search all of their names to get them to appear?

Should I enter the indian name as a known by name when they have a given/sur name? Put it in as a call name?

I created an excel data base to cross reference & find connections between families I might be missing. For example, when a tribe is paid for a claim, a payroll register/file is created. The ones I have seen, don’t define how a person was related to the originally claimant. They are listed as an heir. In order to qualify (if they did their job), they would have to prove they were related to them. Since I haven’t built the relationship, I haven’t found another way to track it other than keeping a separate data base of sorts. If anyone has any experience with this, I would love to hear what you do.

I need Gramps for Dummies.

Thanks for any advice/help/tips.

[DaveSch]

Welcome!

Gramps Names 101.

I will detail what is available to you, how you build a person’s name by imputing the data will be up to you. You will find there will be options available to you.

A person can be given more than one name record in Gramps. The main screen name is known as the Preferred Name and is the name used in reports and lists. When initially adding the information it defaults to the name Type “Birth Name.”. You can change the type to anything that meets your needs. Gramps gives you several options but anything can be added by simply typing it in.

Most fields are available in the person edit window.

Given typically, the first and middle names. Nickname self explained. Call The name the person uses if they do not typically use their first name. Gramps assumes it will be one of their middle names. You can enter anything. If the name is not one of the given names it will display in red as an alert. Suffix is for things like “Jr”, “III”, “Esq”, or a degree like “M.D.”. But again, you can enter anything. The Title is “Dr”, “Rev”, “President”, “Sir”, “General”, etc.

The Surname is typically for the family name. You can add a Prefix to the surname which can be anything. “de”. “of” 'la", and many more. The name record can have more than one surname. At the end of the Surname line there is a plus sign (+) which will expand the window to add additional surnames. Each can have their own prefix. You can add a connector which for my use would be a hyphen (-) but it can be a word.

And there is more. At the end of the Suffix field there is an Edit icon. This will bring up the full Name Editor window for the Preferred name. The field Family Nick Name becomes available. Think of it as an alias for the surname and is passed down with surname guessing from the father.

The name editor allows for adding notes, citations or a date for when the name may have been given or used. You can also Override the surname for sorting purposes. It does not alter the surname but I use the example of variations in surname spellings. “Clark” and “Clarke”. I override each variation with the same “Clark (Clarke)” option. Now in a grouped list the people appear together with their variously spelled surnames.

In the person’s Names tab is where you can add additional names. If you want to switch which name is in the Preferred name slot, select the desired name, right-click, Set as Preferred name.

And lastly, for each individual name, you can override both the Sort and how the name is displayed. The default is set in Preferences on the Data tab. Here you set how the name will display and sort. The single option is the default for both. Several display options are available, but you can build your own using the Edit icon.

The Surname builds the complete surname including any extra surnames, Prefixes and Connectors. There are also options to break that complete surname down into its components. That is an advanced class.

My default is Title Given "Nickname" Surname, Suffix

Note, I also override every name’s Sort option using just Given as the only component. It is not as difficult as it may seem to change every record. The override for the sort carries over with surname guessing from the father. I just need to remember to change the setting when adding spouses.

[DaveSch]

I fear I might of scared you with too much information in the earlier post.

Here are two examples that I was thinking about as a way to set up names.

The “of the” prefix is probably okay for the English version of the names but would need a tribal language equivalent.

and

An example of a possible solution for modern times where the government expects (wants/needs) full names. Notice I added origins to the surnames. The Primary on the surnames does affect the sorting and I offered it on the Tribal name as a possibility.