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Archiver > TMG > 2003-07 > 1057357588


From: Walt <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] TMG 5.07 - Partial names
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 18:26:28 -0400
References: <6.0.0.10.0.20030703213216.028d8330@extremezone.com><5.1.1.6.0.20030704153204.0268e8e0@incoming.verizon.net>
In-Reply-To: <3F05E6C2.B22EB05A@infoave.net>


Richard

I too came from FTM and with a similar convention:

"Alice Smith>" showed a woman whose name was Alice, maiden name
unknown, who married a man named Smith.

Using John Cardinal's TMG Utility 5 to create Name-Marr tags, I now have
tags for Alice and other similarly "maiden name impaired" friends. In
Alice's case the Name-Marr tag reads:

Alice -(?) Smith

This shows on the screen as:

Alice (?) Smith

If you printed her Name-Marr tag in a report it would print as just:

Alice Smith

Since I now have these tags which take the place of the ones with "Smith>"
on them I can afford to get rid of the pseudo last name on those tags.

I do of course have a long list of first names only which sort to the top
of the list.

Walt


At 04:42 PM 4/07/2003, Richard Brogger wrote:
>There are pros and cons to any method of recording names. If you do
>not enter a surname, those records will sort to the top of the
>Picklist. I have a dataset with about 60,000 people and it has first
>name only for about 1,200 women. I don't recall how many Alice's there
>are but I do recall that there are 63 Alice Theresa's. A long list of
>first names only is, IMO, worthless. As a FTM user, I had used the
>husband's surname followed by an apostrophe. For example John Smith
>was married to Alice Smith'. At least that way Alice sorts near the
>family into which she married. In TMG, this system is less useful but
>I still use it so that I do not have a long list of first names only
>at the top of the Picklist.
>
>
>Walt wrote:
> > Version 5.07 - Partial names
> >
> > I have many women in my database for whom I have only first names, and many
> > times no names at all. I also have many men for whom I only have last
> > names. Many people, of course, use some kind of "place holder" words in
> > these cases: wife, husband, son, daughter, husband, wife, Mrs. Billy Bob
> > Elliott, et. cetera.
> >
> > Is it better not to use these "place holder" words when entering partial
> > names into a TMG5 database? That is, is it best to:
> >
> > 1. enter only the first name when that is all I have other than
> > the spouses name
> > 2. enter only the last name when that is all I have other than the
> > spouses name
> > 3. leave the name blank if I know nothing about the person's name
> > other than the spouses name
> >
> > These seem right to me but I know that it is very easy to overlook some of
> > the consequences of a decision like this. As always, all comments will be
> > appreciated.


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