Name Data References
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 11:55:56 +0100
Peter Rossiter wrote:
>> I am perplexed about some of the results from Name Data References in Diagram Options
If you want to know what a tag (field) is used for, the best place to look is the Columns tab of the Query window. The tags (for the current record type) are all listed down the left-hand side. If you click on the tag, a description appears in the box below it. This also works with tag qualifiers.
:FIRST does indeed always return the first name.
:SURNAME gives you the surname - i.e. the name that appears between slash characters. When you enter a name, Family Historian will assume unless you specify otherwise that the last name is the surname. But sometimes it isn't. e.g. if someone has a double-barrelled surname, or they come from a culture where surnames are written before other names, you must set the position of the slash characters appropriately yourself. In 'John Paul /Blashford Snell/', :SURNAME would appears as 'Blashford Snell'. If you don't know the surname, put 2 slashes at the end. e.g. 'Elizabeth Alice //' is someone whose first 2 names are known, but not their surname.
:GIVEN, in Family Historian, is not ALL given names. It is used (in the singular) to mean the given name that a person is actually known by - i.e. it is really short for 'Given Name Used'. Some people are baptised 'A B C', with the intention from the start that they should be known as 'B' or as 'A B'. You can specify this on the Details tab of the Property dialog. If a person was always known by their first given name, you should leave 'Given Name Used' blank, as F.H. will assume that the first (non-surname) name is the given name. But suppose 'John Paul Jones' was always known as 'Paul' or as 'John Paul', you would set the 'Given Name Used' field to either 'Paul' or 'John Paul', as appropriate, and these values would be returned, instead of 'John', for :GIVEN in that case.
: PREFERED is :GIVEN + :SURNAME.
:ADORNED is 'Given name and surname, preceded by name prefix, if any, and followed by name suffix, if any' (to quote from the Columns tab of the Query Window). i.e. if 'John Smith' is a knight, and his name prefix is 'Sir', :ADORNED will show him as 'Sir John Smith'.
There is a standard query called 'Qualifiers for Names' which illustrates the differences between these qualifiers. Some of the differences won't show up, of course, if you never use 'Given Name Used', 'Name Prefix' or 'Name Suffix'.
Finally, if you look at the sub-tags for Name in the Columns tab of the Query Window, you will see that as well as 'qualifiers' (items that begin with a ':', which qualify how a tag's value is displayed), there are also multiple 'sub-tags'. Some of these, like 'Surname' and 'Given' are only intended to be used to by systems that cannot cope with merging given and surnames together in one expression - which is the recommended GEDCOM way of doing things. Family Historian supports these tags, because it supports all GEDCOM tags, but it doesn't use them.
Simon Orde List Administrator and Family Historian designer