Reconsider Advice on Display Name?

What is wrong with that?

In my opinion only Display Name should be possible to enter in multiple languages since it might include a language depended title.

A name itself should never be translated, if it is a Greek the name should be in Greek - but it could be an option to enter it in multiple alphabets. This was one of the big mistakes Geni did when they introduced language support, - solving an alphabet problem with a language option, and even worse claiming that default name field is US english and not making US english as an option as other languages.

What we are missing most is the option to enter multiple complete names with a classification (married, military, immigrant etc) and time period.

As written, it seemed to me it was possibly encouraging the use of Display Names; was thinking it might result in some folks thinking they "ought" to be hard-typing info in the Display Name.
Think your suggestion, Bjorn, would also result in Display Name more often having hard-typed entries.

As I understand it, Geni works much better if there is nothing hard-typed in the Display Name. Preferences for how one sees a name -- eg see last name, not birth surname or see birth surname not last name used (often husband's surname) or see both -- only work if nothing is hard-typed in the display name.

Lois,

I agree with you the advice for Display Name could be updated, but Bjørn also has good points. It would be nice if Geni made some changes, but for now we probably can give a better advice for using the current fields. We should think a bit about it.
It may become a bit complicated, depending on language, alfabeth and language dependent titles.

What about the glaring conflict between General Rules 3 and 5:

3. '''Use the Display Name field''' for the modern version / translation / transliteration in your own language.

5. '''Do NOT fill in the Display Name field'''; by leaving it empty, each person's "name preferences" will be used automatically.

I found this contradictory guidance confusing and imagine others will too.

Sorry about my use of three consecutive single quote marks (''') above. I was attempting to use bold text. Can that be achieved in Discussions?

The display name when empty does not show any information from the also known as field. So if you do want shown something from that or some additional titles or other information that does not belong in the primary name fields, I think you should use the display name.

I do not know if you can use bold text in a discussion. I don't think <b>bold</b> will work.