9 replies to this topic

[Phil Irons]

It happens from time to time that a person in my database marries someone whose Given Name or Surname is not known. It has been my practice in the past to indicate the unknown portion by "FNU' or "LNU" (First name Unknown/ Last name Unknown) as necessary. A friend recently pointed out that, particularly in the cast of LNU, this person would sort into the middle of the L's. He suggested using something that would sort to the beginning of the names List, such as [--??--]. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me, but I was wondering if there are any recognized conventions for indicating FNU or LNU.

TIA

Phil

[Laura]

I use ______ for a missing Given name. No one is going to mistake that for a name which can be the case with FNU or LNU. and it shows I don't have a name in a Family Group Sheet or Narrative report.

I am still trying to decide if I want to also start using that for missing surnames. Right now, if I don't have a Surname, I am leaving it blank. ______ would still sort to the beginning of the surnames on a name list.

[TomH]

Phil, that script font is really hard to read.

[Nettie]

For missing Surnames, if the person is married and female surname is not known, I use [married name]. Especially useful when you have 15 Elizabeth or Mary's in your database and don't remember which husband or family she is part of. Very helpful in the sidebar index list...

For missing given names, I usually leave them blank. Lots of gedcoms use Unknown/Living. I remove the words and leave them blank... This works for me....

[Phil Irons]

Specific response to TomH:

Sorry 'bout that, Tom, I've now changed from MS Comic to Arial. Hopefully that makes a difference. Speaking of hard to read fonts, though, I found this particularly hard to read:

[RonB]

Phil, that script font is really hard to read.

I was thinking more like nearly impossible to read.

[Renee Zamora]

I just wanted to comment that you have to be really careful when you put abbreviations such as FNU, LNU, etc in as surnames. I once had a cousin tell me all excitedly that she found the last name of an end of line grandmother. I went and looked at what she was reporting and found someone had added the last name as LNU. And my cousin thought that was the last name. She didn't understand that was an abbreviation.

I simply put in RootsMagic nothing as the surname. Then they sort to the top of the index list. I will also given them an alternate name fact with their married name.

[MJW]

My approach is similar to Nettie's. For females who were married but I don't know their maiden name, I enter their surname as (Unknown/married surname), e.g. Mary (Unknown/Smith). I used to just enter (Unknown) but then found I had several persons called Mary (Unknown), Elizabeth (Unknown) etc. so I added their married name. If they married more than once, then I would enter Mary (Unknown/Smith/Jones). If I don't have any surname at all for someone, whether male or female, I just record surname as (Unknown). Using brackets means that these names appear at the top of Search lists which can be useful.

[westis]

I used to use "N" for an unknown name, whether given or last name. But am now trying "?". That way, when I print a report for others to go through and update, it is easy for them to see where there is a name missing that they need to add if known. Maybe "______" would be just as good.

However, I am working almost exclusively with oral data for a Kenyan family.

[Kim W]

http://www.geni.com/...e-Accepted/3096

• [-?-] any unknown data

http://www.iijg.org/...AYNU_XXIV_3.pdf

There seems to be too many ways to choose from.