Unknown is not a valid Current Last Name.

Question

Placing "Unknown" in the Current Last Name Field (CLN) triggers - Suggestion 784 Wrong word in Current Last Name.

The word "Unknown" in the CLN field should be replaced with Last name at Birth (LNAB). For married females the CLN should then be marked as uncertain.

Previous discussions on this matter can be found at https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/881260/is-unknown-a-valid-current-last-name

Comments

Perhaps the suggestion should be modified. I can think of reasons why CLN could reasonably be said to have been unknown.

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There are definitely a few exceptions why the CLN should be Unknown.

Just one example is a child that was given a name at birth and after that they were given up for adoption. If the new surname given to them by their adoptive parents is not known, the CLN will remain Unknown until a source can be added with the correct name.

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Your question is a little confusing. It depends on what is in the LNAB, I think.

If LNAB is Unknown and the female is married or has children and 'normally' the married name is used,  CLN should be replaced with Married name, with uncertain status set.  

If LNAB is not Unknown, as in your example, then yes, the CLN should be set to LNAB.

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Linda the LNAB is known. The person has the same LNAB as her father and siblings.

I agree - "If LNAB is Unknown and the female is married or has children and 'normally' the married name is used,  CLN should be replaced with Married name."

If a source can be added that her married name was used in a census, death certificate of Grave Marker, it would confirm that is her CLN.

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Could you direct us to the actual Help page guideline on this issue, Esmé?

Or is your post relevant only to the referenced profile?

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Help Page for Name Fields

Unknown is not referenced in the Current Last Name, which is what I think Esme is talking about 'when Last Name at Birth' was not Unknown. 

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Thanks for the link, Linda, but that Help page does not state that Unknown is not a valid current last name, as per Esmé's opening statement.

In fact, elsewhere on that Help page (Help:Name_Fields#Special_rules_for_required_fields) we are instructed to use Unknown when the name for the relevant required name field is not known. Since current last name is a required field, using Unknown is a valid possibility.

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The post is not relevant to just this profile it applies to all profiles that has a valid LNAB

Although it is not clearly spelled out on the Naming guidelines it does trigger - Suggestion 784 Wrong word in Current Last Name.

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Thanks for clarifying your post, Esmé!

As you indicate, we don't appear to have a specific guideline regarding the use of Unknown as a current last name, even when we have a known last name at birth.

That such a situation results in a Suggestion is, in my opinion, irrelevant. The Suggestion is, after all, just a suggestion; it may or may not require changing Unknown as a current last name. Each situation should be judged individually, based on cited sources (again, my opinion).

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Good points, Lindy.  I'd hope that one of the things people consider in making such judgments is usefulness to other researchers.  In my opinion, it adds nothing to put "Unknown" in the CLN field.  I'd rather see the last known surname, and a note added to the biography explaining why that isn't strictly accurate.

Answer 1

I have a medieval relative.  I know her LNAB.   I know the names of her first two husbands.  I know that she married a third time, but I do not know her third husband's LN, which would be her CLN. So her CLN is LITERALLY Unknown.

Comments

This situation is not uncommon in the modern era either. The couple divorced or the husband died. The woman remarried but you don't know the name of the latest husband, or even if he was the last husband, you don't know if she used his name, or retained an earlier husband's name, or reverted to her maiden name... All of these things happen. Really, her final last name is really, truly "unknown"

Answer 2

I agree there should be exceptions, though I don't know how to craft the rule.  It would apply to women in New France and Indigenous women, both groups did not take their spouses name.  I just mark that error false as it's not too frequent.

Comments

Since the rule is not universally correct, the best solution is to remove the rule.

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Cindy, there are many other jurisdictions where women do not change their last names on marriage, or at least have the choice. Where I live, a woman can legally choose to use any one of a range of last names, including her birth name, a married name, the name of a former partner, etc She can also revert to a former name very easily

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Agreed.  I couldn't know them all, just the ones I work with.  So changing a rule to skip over these exceptions seemed complex, is mainly what I meant.  Even just for the ones I know, not to mention the rest of the world.  Even now I have the name of my long time husband even though I was married to the love of my life afterwards, it was just too complicated to change my name.  So now I have the name of someone I am not related to and don't even much care for!  At least the children still use this name . . .

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But if a woman does not change her last name (I didn't change mine) on marriage, her CLN would be the same as her LNAB.  It would NOT be "Unknown" which is the question here.

Having the CLN the same as the LNAB doesn't trigger an error

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I wonder if there would be less use of Unknown if the wording was Last known last name. I know this does not read as well.

Explanation in the biography will help when it is uncertain if a person changed their name.

Surnames can change for either sex.

Answer 3

There are thousands of profiles with LNAB 'Unknown" often created to have a woman, that has other data, as a spouse or that has children. Just mark the suggestion "false" and it will not appear again. Hopefully in the future someone will determine the LNAB.

Sorry -- I answered to fast. Please ignore my comment.

Comments

The question was about Current Last Name,  not LNAB. If the person has a spouse or children, the CLN should be the married name, with uncertain.

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The example included has a LNAB of Mills but Current Last Name was set to Unknown.

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this does not apply everywhere, in this province and prior incarnations, a woman keeps her LNAB throughout her life.  Only for a century or less was the English convention applied to give her her ''current'' husband's last name as CLN.

Answer 4

Unknowns have become a huge problem throughout WikiTree.

May I add to this discussion, we should not be adding new profiles as Unknown Unknown. If one does not know both the given name and LNAB, then I suggest a Research Note be placed in the parent's profile stating a child was born but no information is known at this time, a profile will be created when information is available.

Answer 5

Edited: there is a radio button to mark  the CLN as “certain” or  “uncertain “ (my apologies)

Although it is my practice to populate the cln field with the LNAB, unless  you have  sighted the death certificate,  you cannot be sure of the cln. The person may have changed their last name for any one of a plethora of reasons- adoption, marriage, remarriage, divorce, immigration, deed poll etc

Where I live, there are many women who retain their LNAB after marriage. Sometimes, the man changes his name. Sometimes they both change (eg use a hyphenated version)! It is also legally possible to revert to a former name, or to continue using the name of a former partner . Etc etc

Comments

Susan, if I understand your comments...

It doesn't seem altogether reasonable to use the LNAB for the current last name, if a woman had married and there were documents listing her married name.  I'd think the current last name would be whatever was last found in the records.

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Sorry, I probably did not express myself well.

In short, I would prefer the CLN field not be a mandatory field and not be automatically populated with the LNAB if a researcher leaves it empty, because often we do not know the person's name at death when creating a profile.

It follows, I can understand why some researchers want to enter "Unknown" as the CLN, especially for women who do often (but not always) change their names on marriage or divorce. But the issue is not confined to women. Some men also change their name for various reasons.

Really, unless we have sighted a person's death certificate, burial record or obituary, we cannot know a person's last name at death which is what is supposed to go in the CLN field.

Answer 6

I would like to give an example I ran into recently.  I found an obituary and based on that name went searching for the death certificate.  I accidentally found it when I discovered the person on Findagrave.  Her death certificate and her memorial contained the surname of her previous spouse, not the surname of her current spouse as the obituary stated.  Now, I actually can understand Findagrave assuming she was interred with her first spouse and her name was on the stone, this is commonplace, at least in the USA.  What I don't understand is the Death Certificate, a supposedly legal document.  I would think that would be considered falsification which is illegal.  She was legally married to both.  How would that be handled?  It's not quite CLN Unknown but it's close, I feel like I would have to use the Death Certificate name and list the actual names in the AKA's with perhaps transcribing the obituary with the name portion in the Biography.  There is so much conjecture where surnames are concerned.  There is only one thing we can possibly know is that when they got married someone knew their full name, we hope?

Comments

I'm sure you have done this already, but for the brand new WikiTreers who see this:  Be sure to make a

== Research Notes ==

section, and explain what you just wrote here in that section!  Then I would include the other last name in the "Other Last Name" field, so that both names are easily searchable, just to make it easy for any future descendants to find!

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Thank you Bartley, I thought of ==Research Notes== after I went to bed.  I'm getting better at using them but I still have a long way to go.  What I didn't realize (and should having) is that these would be searchable fields.  All I can say is "doh" because I'm a retired computer programmer.

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If you have candidates for the person's Current Last Name, but are unsure which (if any) of them is the correct name, instead of entering "Unknown", put one of those names in the Current Last Name field, with an "uncertain" qualifier. That way the profile might turn up as a match if someone tries to start a new profile with that name ("Other Last Names" do not show up as matches). And be sure to record any additional candidate names in the Other Last Names data field. "Other Last Names" do turn up in WikiTree name searches (unlike additional names that are only entered in the profile text).

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Thank you so much for this! Makes me feel better about how much I'm learning and how much I still don't know. Sometimes I feel really stupid with Wiki. Computer science, psychology, reading and comprehension, genealogy, etc have not provided a constant supply of right answers. Really glad to hear I am not alone. This is why I keep getting involved in more projects and groups than I am rationally able to do. Overload helps me learn more faster. When I cannot do enough I read more about how to do it. I watch the little videos, read these comment threads and even observe the group interactions. Eventually, I get it. Thanks again to all of you!

ps~to the original question,  I use the radio button. "uncertain" seems a legitimate response and doesn't flag error message. I am technically on the Tartan Trail, Data Doctor, Sourcerer and a few other things but do not yet feel adequate with any of them. Thats why I keep doing them.

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Thanks to all for your wonderful and useful answers, I truly appreciate all the great Wikitree'ers that haunt the G2G.

Answer 7

This actually makes me want to ask for a change on the policy to use the funeral record as the basis for CLN.

For example, Anne Marie Phansèque died pretty much destitute, the priest states right on the funeral record that he couldn't find out her name other than she was known as ''la bonne femme Cardinal'', Irish in nationality.  She wasn't Irish, she was German.  Nobody knows where she spent many years of her latter life.

Why are we using the funeral record as the basis for CLN?  Jan Wall-Buker above gives the example of one woman whose funeral record names her first spouse and not her last one.  I have seen this elsewhere, no mention of a second spouse on a funeral record, presumably because the children of the first marriage only gave that name to the priest?  Despite the fact that the deceased might have been using a different name while still living?  

As for naming them Unknown, well, Anne Marie might indeed have been listed as Unknown in CLN box per that criterion, the priest did not know it, and nobody he asked could even give him her given name.  I'm sure this is certainly not the only instance where a person's name isn't known when they are buried.