Misleading [family name unknown] in a culture without family names

Question

For traditional Norwegian profiles, the consensus is to use the patronym as LNAB. If the patronym is unknown, one should use either a "farm name" or "Unknown".

Just now, I entered a profile for a woman whose patronym is unknown, and I found it inappropriate to use the toponym "Haugen". But after orphaning her, I find that the "Unknown" LNAB is replaced by "[family name unknown]" which is even more inappropriate. "Family names" were largely a foreign concept in Norwegian culture until late nineteenth century.

For patronymic cultures, I find "Last name" to be more culture neutral than "Family name", and "Last name" is what is being used everywhere else in WikiTree. So why does the "Family name" pop up here?

Comments

That term is rather unfortunate in that, for example, Bulgarians use slavic style patronymics but "family name" in Bulgaria implies a clan type name, which is something else entirely.

Answer 1

I've made a note that the wording seems to be inconsistent.

Answer 2

Hi Leif,

If you place Haugen in Current Last Name, it reads,
"Guro Haugen formerly [surname unknown]"

Not sure that's much better, but I suppose it's an option.

Comments

Thank you Mark, it's certainly an option. But I generally feel that putting "farm names" in the CLN field is inappropriate, as they were mostly used as aliases and as such should be placed in the OLN field. I recognise that other people have other ideas about it, though.

IMO, it would be better and more consistent to use the [surname unknown] in both cases.