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I don’t know whether this is a problem unique to Welsh ancestry, but I have numerous lines which over the last several generations have all carried the same surname (eg POWELL) but, several generations back we reach the era of Welsh patronymic naming and find an ancestor who was named for example ‘Howell ap HOWELL'(Howell son of Howell). Often – especially during the generation(s) during which the patronymic convention gradually gave way to more conventional English-style surnames – we find individuals who started to adopt the new form some of the time (eg for official documents) but not all the time and so we have ‘Howel ap HOWELL alias Howell POWELL’. His father Howell may have been, for example, the son of Leison ap WILLIAM, so he would be known as Howell ap LEISON or Howell LEISON. And sometimes, with the most common names you can find earlier generations being tagged on the the name for clarity eg “Thomas ap WILLIAM ap DAVID ap EVAN”

If i haven’t lost you, all this is to say that for the above POWELL family (for that is indeed what we call it – all generations since the late 1700’s having taken the surname POWELL) I would want my root individual for the Fancy Tree View to be either Howel ap HOWELL or Howell ap LEISON. However, whichever way I try to set it up I end up with the the Fancy Tree View drop-down menu item being called HOWELL Family or LEISON Family (and to make matters worse, I actually have ‘real’ HOWELL lines and Leison lines, so it is completely confusing for users).

My simple request, then, is to have the option to change the family name regardless of the surname of the root person.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

What is the GEDCOM SURN of the root person of the POWELL family? It sounds like it isn’t “Howel ap HOWELL”, but you seem to be indicating it should be.

You can also give a person more than one name. FTV will use the “default” name, which by GEDCOM specification is deemed to be the first one listed in the GEDCOM data.

Not questioning the value of your suggestion, but it is already a complex module, and I’d like to exhaust all existing options before adding further complexity.

As an aside I have made other minor changes after discussion with other users:
1 – The display name (Menu) for the module will now be “Descendants” rather than “Tree view”. Apart from better describing it’s purpose this is also an preparation for it becoming the first in a new complete replacement suite of “Reports”
2 – Removed the repetitive “Descendants of the XXXXXX family” used in sub menu’s to show just “XXXXX family”. The individual page header does still use “”Descendants of the XXXXXX family”

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

What is the GEDCOM SURN of the root person of the POWELL family?

.
Depending upon which one I choose to use as the root person:

2 SPFX ap
2 SURN Howell alias Howell Powell

.. or his father:

2 SPFX ap
2 SURN Leison

.. or his father:

2 SPFX ap
2 SURN William

.. or his father:

2 SPFX ap
2 SURN Evan ap Howell

You can also give a person more than one name.

I fear that it is already sufficiently complicated Nigel, without giving them additional ‘artificial’ names which could serve to confuse further . Unfortunately, although the Welsh are pretty good at rugby, their traditional naming conventions were a genealogist’s nightmare.

As an aside I have made other minor changes after discussion with other users:

Good – I like the change.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

clandav wrote:

I fear that it is already sufficiently complicated Nigel, without giving them additional ‘artificial’ names which could serve to confuse further .

However, recording it the way you are is exactly what is preventing FTV from functioning as you would like 🙁 It is written to function according to GEDCOM ‘norms’. But of course GEDCOM is, always has been, and probably always will be open to different interpretations.

Mine would be:
a) that “ap” is not a surname prefix. It is used between two parts of a surname.
b) two names, or one name with variants is a more common solution

Might be worth reading this to get some idea of alternatives: http://wiki.webtrees.net/en/Names:_Advanced_Topics

One thing it mentions is entering patronymic names like this: Dia / Evans / ap / Howell /

(But I confess I’ve never tried that myself and don’t know what FTV does with it).

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

The point is that whether or not I treat ‘ap’ as a surname prefix (and I have done it that way because a number of the people with whose trees mine interconnects have done it that way) I stiil end up with the ‘surname’ of the individuals mentioned above, as HOWELL, LEISON, WILLIAM, etc – a different one depending upon the generation chosen – and FTV will take THAT name as the name of the FAMILY – which is not correct when viewed from the 20th (or even the 19th) century -This line has been the POWELL family for the last 7 generations and all descendants regard it as the POWELL family. To call it the HOWELL or LEISON or WILLIAM family, and change it depending which root person is selected, is incorrect and unhelpful. It is made even more confusing by the fact that in the same extended family tree there are also lines which have evolved to use the names HOWELL and LEISON as the family name and it is those lines which should be referred to as the HOWELL Family and the LEISON Family, not the one we know as the POWELL family. Equally, to meddle with the facts by changing the GEDCOM first/principle name to something that it definitely wasn’t cannot be the right answer because it effects all other handling and those individusals were NEVER called POWELL.
It seems to me that however I interpret the GEDCOM standard, the way in which the FTV code works, it cannot solve this problem to my satisfaction, unless the option is provided to override the selected family name for the purposes of naming the resulting View. So I raised it as a possibility. But I realise that this is probably unique to Welsh genealogy so I can accept that FTV is likely to be a function that I can’t effectively use for the Welsh lines, with a Root person selected from a period earlier than the end of patronymic naming. I can still select – in this example – the first person to use the surname POWELL as the root person, and leave people to back-track from him through the earlier generations to find out what they need to know .

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

I realise that I didn’t mention the alternative of recording individuals like Howel ap HOWELL as having NO surname (as covered in the wiki to which you referred me.). In practice this causes more problems than it solves unless a database is exclusively pre-18th century Welsh, so using exclusively patronymic naming. This is probably not the place to take that further but with respect tothe issue which caused me to raise the topic, even with NO surname, FTV it would not – indeed could not – generate the desired family name – ‘POWELL’ in my example. Only an override option would make this possible I believe, but as I have indicated, I’m happy to regard it as a restriction and to live without it.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14

Ron

I hear what you are saying.

but as I have indicated, I’m happy to regard it as a restriction and to live without it.

Don’t give up so easily 🙂

With the current version (the one you have) the fact the sub-menus default to something like “Descendants of the Howel ap HOWELL Family” could be an argument against what you want. Whatever current name might be used for the family, they ARE all descendants of that very early name. So at least it is accurate, if not desired.

But now that I am changing it to just “Howel ap HOWELL Family” it seems your problem gets even worse. I can see the issue impacting a broader range of families than just Welsh.

So bear with me. You suggestion has merit. Not sure when or if I can do it, but I will investigate.

But, as noted earlier, I have changed that for the next release. so now it will just say “Evan ap Howell Family”

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

OK – thanks Nigel – I hope you won’t put too much time and effort into it though, given the fact that mine is possibly the only kiwitrees site to have the problem.

Ron in France Website: https://clan-davies.kiwitrees.net/ kiwitrees 3.3.11; PHP 8.0.14