Naming conventions where first name is unknown - what to use?

An endless question. :). I should also add that --- is used & acceptable, and the best is -- if you don't know it, leave it blank. I have found that principle difficult to sustain in a merge environment however.

I use "unknown" in the USA tree and N.N. In the "international" tree. I also use the "display name" field to describe the relationship. I don't like ?? because I can't bring myself to name a person with a punctuation mark. But I don't change it from someone else's entry.

Examples:

N.N.
Display name: Grace Jenkin's father

N.N.
Display name: Grace Jenkin's daughter

I use "unknown" where it clearly makes sense to do so. Like for Holocaust victims that were we will never know their names.

For example,

Let's say that I have a family with 12 children, I would use "unknown #1", "unknown #2", etc.

Kevin

Recapping many earlier discussions on the same subject:

* N.N. might be "recommended" but it is confusing for many users who are not familiar with it, and it is technically incorrect if any part of the name is known.

* Many non-English speakers are upset and confused by "Unknown", just as many English speakers are upset and confused by Desconocido, Ignotus, Inconnu, Okänd, Unbekannt, etc.

* In English the most historically correct form would be an ellipsis (...), but many users have difficulty seeing it on their displays.

* Many professional genealogists recommend using a blank if possible, but a blank on Geni is almost an invitation for a merge to replace it with something else. The same people recommend using --- if a blank isn't possible because it clearly shows absent information without being language specific.

* Some of the curators have a strong and unyielding preference for ?

Thanks, everyone, for your contributions. (I was sure that I wasn't the first person to raise this issue, but couldn't find any discussion or guidance about it when I searched the site. Being a relative newbie, I am still learning the weird and wonderful ways of Geni!)

I understand and appreciate the many and varied points of view, and that ultimately it seems to be a matter of preference... But I think it would be really nice if consensus amongst curators could be achieved to provide guidance in the Naming Conventions guide. :-)

I think that I am probably going to opt for --- (is that 3 hyphens? difficult to see), or ?? (but how many question marks, that is the question?).

Hmmm... Might give it a day or two to think about it and watch for further contributions to this discussion.

I use nn in the first name field and NN in the lastname field. That way I can write nn Olson if only the first name is unknown, or Andrew NN if only the lastname is unknown. There are a lot of us genealogists that write unknown names this way. If both first and lastname are unknown I write nn NN which indicates that both names are unknown.

A point i do need to make about "usability.". I mostly merge on iPad (profile view > actions menu > merge) and cannot get a name with ... or --- to come up on my Geni "short name" list in any visible fashion; this is solved by use of "display name.". ?? comes up if there is another name element filled in, not otherwise.

Now this is really disheartening. I've been converting all of my other usages to "NN" for years, as I thought that that was the excepted standard.

What good is establishing a standard, if the experts in here can't agree to it?

Mark - I don't change! I'm happy with whatever works for someone in their tree. Just defining what I've found difficult (using punctuation without a display name).

I always use NN, to my knowledge its used internationally both in jurisdiction and genealogy as a common way of showing both unknown and censored names.. NN is short for Nomen Nescio (latin) that can be translated to anonymous..

I cant see why a genealogical and interantional standard like NN should be replaced by national expressions like unknown, ukjent etc. as its confusing and in some cases people think its part of their name.. NN is so much in use in litterature that a genealogist should know and learn what it means..

I use NN in first name when its unknown, but leave it blank in the surname field if the first name is known..

N.N. is the way to go. No need to put anything in the surname fields. That's just overkill.

I think we can see that there will never be any agreement on this question ;)

During one of the past discussions on the same subject, I talked to a friend of mine who teaches genealogy. Since then I've talked to several others, and also to other professional genealogists. Their reaction is always the same -- they roll their eyes, or sigh, or sadly shake their heads.

They say it's not a standard, was never a standard. The "best practice" is to avoid it.

N.N. is an archaic legal term that had a specific meaning. Genealogists who use it have adapted it by changing the meaning. Strictly speaking, it means the name, the whole name, is unknown. It functioned the same way "John Doe" does today. It was never used if the first or last names were known. It was never used for an unknown first name and repeated for an unknown last name.

I used to use it myself, but stopped when a lawyer buddy pointed out that as a lawyer I should know better. The deciding point for me was if even one person might be judging my work as sloppy because I"m misusing a word, then I don't want to do it.

The genealogists I talked to aren't particularly interested in that argument, though. They all focus on an entirely different argument -- in genealogy we should avoid ambiguity whenever possible. Using N.N. creates ambiguity because some people assume that it is the actual initials of the person.

I'm with the professional genealogists - if a name is not known, I expect its field to be blank. For public profiles, using a placeholder for an unknown name affects where the profile appears within the list of public profiles for the represented surname (which frustrates me to no end).

http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions#Naming_Placeholders (of which I wasn't previously aware - thanks, Melanie) says "For unknown names that require a placeholder"...which begs the question: do unknown names in any profiles on Geni require a placeholder? If so, which ones?

I hadn't thought about the indexing problem. Seems like that would be a reason to at least try to put aside all our different stylistic preferences and come up with a clearer "best practice".

Geni will make you enter at least one name element on a new profile, but won't object if you remove it later.

John,

"Re: do unknown names in any profiles on Geni require a placeholder? If so, which ones?"

Re: which ones. "first arrivers" to America - my curating focus area.

We do not yet have relationship locking, so there are only two options to prevent spurious parents from being added.

1. Fully locked profiles requiring curators only to merge or update

2. Placeholder parent profiles which then any member can select in the merge wizard; or any PRO or placeholder profile manager can remove the incorrect parents, because they have a clear curator note & profile name indicating the unknown value

I hadn't thought about the indexing issue, good point.

I don't like NN or nn for reasons already stated above. I used to always use ?? because my other preferred choice, "unknown" could be mis-interpreted by non-English speaking users however recently I have started using "Unknown" because I figured we have translation now but perhaps it's not refined enough yet and I should revert to ?? which is clear in any language.

I can't tell you how many times people think Desconocido is a first name. I think N.N. is the lesser of two evils in an international tree. I personally find ??? tacky and it's problematic for computers. I asked Geni to create a checkbox for Name Unknown, but it obviously was never developed.

The word ""Unknown" in a namefield won't be translated into another language just because the user is not using english as the main language on Geni. But if it is preferale that we all start to use our language word for unknown in the namefields, I can promote that. Ofcouse the result wil be names like Ezezaguna, Nepoznata, Desconegut, Ukendt, Onbekend, Tundmatu, Tuntematon, άγνωστος, Ismeretlen, Sconosciuto, mhux magħruf, nieznany and so on, and that was just a few of the european languages. How would that look, Terry?

And ?? is a common sign-combination used by transcribers of primary sources showing that the word or name is unreadable because of terrible writing, inkspots, torn pages or some other reason in the original source, so when I as a genealogists see a namefield with ?? I interpret the name as unreadable in the source and not as unknown. Which to me means that there is a name in the source, but the reader wasn't able to read it.

Remi, I'm glad you brought that up. When I see ? or --- my first thought is that the name was illegible rather than unknown. Because I'm used to reading the old English Visitations, I see ... as truly unknown. I suppose we could say it was the old 17th and 18th century genealogy standard ;)

I think I'm coming around to this preference order in the international tree:

...

Advantage: unambiguous in any name field
Disadvantage: will NOT show in the short list. Trust me, I've tried. It doesn't.
Workaround: add a display name field

N.N. (when all name parts are unknown), (is this in the first name field only?)
Advantage: a known acronym to genealogists
Disadvantage: not a known acronym to all members
Workaround: a tool tip?

Outstanding questions:
- what if a name part is known but not the complete name?

I like Xxx, which is semantically obvious to anyone who ever took/studied algebra.
It also serves as a subtle hint to use proper capitalization when replacing it.

Still following...

Great discussion, thanks everyone. I'll be putting in my tuppence worth again once I have some breathing space (and may be posting a separate one about a different but somewhat related issue).

Keep it coming...lots of interesting and well-justified positions here already. (But perhaps the ultimate difficulty is how to come to a consensus and/or if a prescriptive method is necessary or desirable on Geni?)

Please let me know what you decide, I am always in trouble for this.

As with others, I find "_____" or "NN" ambiguous and aesthetically unpleasing, but use "Unknown" mostly since it is a reminder that the actual name should be replaced. In appropriate case, I use (Unknown) for "(Birthname)" and Unknown for "Surname", as well as for "Firstname". In addition, I am not too challenged my foreign equivalents and try to preserve foreign name forms where used as much as possible. In general, I appreciate our discussions.

Erica: "- what if a name part is known but not the complete name?"

As I wrote, I use "nn" in the Firstname field, and NN in the Lastname field. Which is common to genealogists in my part of the world.

Hmmm… A search using NN and Unknown in the first name field quickly reveals the magnitude of the problem. Both produce 5000+ people. As someone mentioned, it’s impossible to search on --- or ???.

Ideally (wearing a few hats from my various roles in my working life), whoever runs Geni would set up a project team to explore the issue and come up with a “best solution”, the team consisting of a users’ group (consisting of experienced and amateur /newbie genealogists and a librarian or two), a project manager, and IT business analysts. Once a best practice or standard is decided, it wouldn’t be too hard to translate business rules into IT programming logic, to steer users in the right direction, e.g. say “NN” is decided and the user starts entering “Unknown” or “???” (or anything from a long list of variants added to this list of likely but unacceptable entries).

However [sigh], coming back to the real world… just a glance over this thread is enough to reveal that there’s never going to be consensus, leave alone a standard set by users alone…

I personally think that a lot more could be done in the very early stages to prevent people going beyond a certain stage without reading some essential guides, which could be done as a kind of simple tutorial with a series of pages that need to be navigated through and ticked off before being let loose to play havoc with the existing database. (This thought occurred to me after learning more about the endless problems with duplicates and merges – and having made a few basic errors myself along the way when I was setting up my first few profiles.)

But, getting back to the issue under discussion, it looks as if for the foreseeable future, people are just going to carry on doing their own thing and sticking to their own preferences. I can see justification for everybody’s opinions here (and some great questions have been raised), but unfortunately it looks as if there’s no way to enforce a standard.

My own opinion? I am now back to leaning towards Unknown, or perhaps even in parentheses, i.e. “(Unknown)”, which would make it clear to others reading it in different languages. If I saw (Inconnu) or (Okänd) or (Ajnata), I would conclude that it wasn’t a name.

NN is good in theory, and if it were just genealogists and OCD people like me who are likely to look for rules about these things, or everyone was familiar with Latin abbreviations, but let’s face it, everyone and their dogs are recording family trees online these days, and not everyone is as pernickety about getting things right, or what the database looks like. Also, some people use full stops with it and some don’t, compounding the variations.

--- and ??? both have merit, imo, but also drawbacks as mentioned by others.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful responses and discussion though – hopefully at least partially fruitful and useful to some people.

The theme that really strikes me in this discussion and other discussions on the same subject is how much individual decisions are driven by personal aesthetics. Not much effort to look for common ground or develop a best practice.

How about Geni giving us a check-box for unknown name fields?
Merging could look at those to make a decision about how to match and how to merge. The prompt for the check-box could be translated in the users language. Users could leave the name fields empty or put in the value they like for unknown. That would not create any confusion when the check-box is used (it probably should be clear if a check-box was added to an existing profile by the conversion and was not changed by a user yet [different colour?])

That would be the perfect solution, wouldn't it?

As I mentioned above, I've been requesting that for years.