Entering multiple surnames to a person

Question

Hi.  I have a question as to how properly record the name of a person who has multiple "surnames" in their name.  I looked at the help pages and the info there did not really help me.  I work primarily with Portuguese profiles and more often than not a person inherits all the family names of both parents.  For instance in my case, I have a first name (Eneida) and the rest of my name are family names, not really middle names.  But I consider my last surname as THE surname, so I've been using the middle name field to record these other surnames.  However because I'm doing  this, WT displays the name in short form.  When searching to see if someone already has a profile in WT before creating a new profile, because only the short form appears, it may look like there is no profile yet especially if the first name and surname are common.  Also, I've seen a lot of inconsistency as to how these names are entered by other profile managers in general.  For instance with profile [[Álvares_Pereira_de_Melo-2]], the actual surname is "de Melo".  Alvares Pereira are other middle surnames for this person.  The WT ID then is all 3 surnames. Not sure if this impacts potential surname projects as if there is someone who whats to create a "de Melo" surname study may not include these.  The issue too is that WT will not display the full name unless these "middle" surnames are either recorded on first name field or in the surname field. I have someone who I want to add that has 8 "middle" surnames.  It seems very silly to include all 9 surnames in the surname field.  Any thoughts on the best and most consistent way to do this?

Comments

Did you look at the guidance on the Portuguese Naming Conventions page? Adding Portugal as a tag on your question might get the attention of someone from the Portugal Project who could advise you better.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Portuguese_Naming_Conventions

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Thanks so much!  I totally missed that page

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Let me know if you have any questions Eneida!

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Thanks Mindy.  I think I'm good now on this subject. 

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Hi Mindy. The only lingering question I have is on WT surname search surname projects. I am now following the Portuguese Naming Convention page and will start amending accordingly on the profiles I manage. Somehow I had missed that help page. My bad. Will work diligently to correct that. But I guess my question is how does that affect surname projects?  I've also find it hard to search before adding new profile.  But all good.  I agree that it's how Portuguese surnames should be recorded but there are limitations on WT fields. For instance, my pet peeve is the prefix field.  It has limitations of letter characters.  Which works well for English only profiles. Would love to be able to record a prefix like, Capitāo-Môr  without WT cutting some letters off

Answer 1

There are no middle names in Portuguese culture, so that field should be empty in Portuguese profiles. We should not put there family or given names just because it would look better when it is displayed in some pages.

If the family name of a person has more than one word they all should be put all together in the relevant surname field (LNAB, Current Last Name, Other Last Names).

Before XX century there were no law or rigid rules about the transmission of family names(1), and was common siblings with same parents to use different surnames.

If the only source is a baptism record with just the given name and parents names you can not be sure what was the surname if the person. In this case I put in the research notes of the profile the disclaimer: "It's possible the surname is not correct (source does not have a surname). At this time and place it's common siblings with same parents to use different surnames. Following current WikiTree standard (Dec21) surname of the father was arbitrarily used in order to avoid another unknown surname."

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Sn

(1) Monteiro, Nuno Gonçalo. “Os nomes de família em Portugal: uma breve perspectiva histórica.” Etnográfica, vol. 12, no. 1, May 2008, pp. 45–58. SciELO, http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0873-65612008000100003&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt.
"Family names in Portugal: a brief historical overview
This essay constitutes a first attempt to study a theme which, in spite of its enormous importance, has received little historical attention: the evolution of the Portuguese practices of anthroponymy that had a worldwide impact due to Portuguese imperial expansion. The author contrasts the changes that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century to the practices that were prevalent among the Portuguese aristocracy ever since the great changes that took place at the end of the Middle Ages. "
 

Comments

Thank you!

Eneida