did what's allowed for country for post-colonial America change? [closed]

Question

I prefer USA (or United States of America) over "United States" but all my USAs are being changed to "United States"

Before I start changing them back to USA on profiles that I'm the only PM for, I thought I'd better check.

Comments

I'm pretty sure it's up to the Profile Manager, so long as it's correct for the time-frame.  

(It may be that some folk prefer the full spelling out, to avoid confusion -- but that mostly applies to places where the same abbreviations can be for more than one place: eg WA, CA, SA, and so on.)

I'm fairly sure previous discussions on this subject say USA is perfectly acceptable.  (I tend to use "United States", because -- right now, anyway -- "everyone" understands that to mean the United States of America.  But will future readers understand it the same way, seeing there are other "united states" in the world?  Only time will tell.)

edited to add -- link to previous discussion: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1328443/did-whats-allowed-for-country-post-colonial-america-change

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from https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields (emphasis added)

Use the full place name for counties, states, provinces, départements, etc. Examples: Rhode Island, not RI; New Brunswick, not NB; Hampshire, not Hants; Seine-et-Marne, not S-M. Abbreviation of country names is acceptable as long as the abbreviation is standard and is recognizable.

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This table lists acceptable options as USA, United States of America, and United States.

Answer 1

OK, now my two cents' worth...people should find better things to do than change profiles you manage from one to the other.  I use USA and am never going to switch to United States of America.  It's too long.  I can't imagine many situations in which it wouldn't be clear which country you are talking about, especially if there was also a state name in the location.  

But by the way, I always spell out the state names!

Comments

I can't speak to why Liz's profiles were being edited, but I know sometimes a profile will pop up on the weekly suggestion list for a misspelled word in the location or some other error.  If I go in to fix that error, I'll change USA or US to United States.  It's not something I would set out to do, but I'll do it if I'm already in there fixing something else with the location name.

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I guess the lesson here is to keep our suggestions list cleaned up.

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The profile that prompted the question had no suggestions (hidden or otherwise). The person who edited it - who was not related through either mother or father- described the changes as "cleaning GEDCOM junk" (which I find a bit offensive to begin with) there was no "GEDCOM junk" to be removed and the edits did not remove anything. The edit changed USA to United States:

Birth Location
-	Guilford, North Carolina, USA	+	Guilford, North Carolina, United States
Death Location
-	Wilson, Tennessee, USA	+	Wilson, Tennessee, United States

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The State names in the USA are to be typed out (like Mississippi), but United States of America doesn't have to be typed out. Actually the State abbreviation causes a Database-Error. So "Mississippi, USA" is my choice too.

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I'd be inclined to send a polite (of course) message to this member, with a link showing that USA is acceptable according to WikiTree standards.  It's possible they really don't know that.

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Thanks for the star, Chase.

Answer 2

The drop down place menus here on Wikitree use United States.

Comments

Those dropdowns are from Family Search and are not required to be followed on Wikitree.

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When correcting or extending a place name, using the drop down list, the country name "United States" is the standard.

It is time for WT to develop their own list and include "United States of America" on all place names.

USA is also the abbreviation for "Union of South Africa."

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USA is also the abbreviation for "Union of South Africa."

commented by Walt Steesy

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Only in English - and since 1961 it's been RSA. 

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from https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#Place_Name_Suggestions

You do not need to accept any of the place name suggestions. They may not be the ideal way to record the place name on WikiTree.

Answer 3

Dear Liz,

   My two cents - USA is an abbreviation, and therefore to be avoided.  What is perfectly clear to someone who lives there can be very confusing to someone who doesn't.  

    Case in point - I live in the Virgin Islands.  Anyone here knows the island of St Thomas is part of the United States. Yet many people are more familiar with the British Virgin Islands. So, United States Virgin Islands gets spelled out. -NGP

Answer 4

This is more of a general answer to the question and a commentary on some of the responses.

I wonder how many historical empires used abbreviations for their names under the mistaken belief that since everyone there “knew” their empires would last forever, everyone would always know what they meant.

While the term USA may be understood by most of the English-speaking world today as the United States of America, perhaps less so in the non-English world, can anyone guarantee that in 100 years or so the situation will remain the same? Mind you, no one can guarantee that Wikitree will last that long, but the plan is for it to be perpetual.

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, until 1961, USA could mean the Union of South Africa, especially to someone living in that country. Would it be wrong for them to use USA as an abbreviation for Union of South Africa in a Wikitree profile entry and if so, I challenge anyone to explain the difference between that error and the use of USA as an abbreviation for United States of America.

It is fine to point out that if the State is included in the name that would uniquely identify the place, but what if it is not? I see many cases where the country is known, but no lessor geopolitical entity is identified.

FamilySearch standardizes on United States for the USA, which, to me, smacks of arrogance (as well as not being specific), as if there were no other countries in the world with that phrase as part of their name. Of course, they also use the make-believe entity they like to call “British Colonial America” which kind of demonstrates a different level of genealogical complacency to Wikitree.

As I continue my 40-year plus adventure into Family History research, I have become more and more convinced that in order to prevent confusion we should be adopting the attitude that place names should be spelled out in full as accurately as possible to avoid any possibility of confusion now… or in the future.

Comments

so... your vote would be for "United States of America" instead of my preferred USA, yes?

I think that the question I posed has been answered (WikiTree guidelines have not changed), so I will close this question, but I do appreciate all of the responses. I had already edited "United States" to "USA" but it seems that "USA" is not ideal. You may have convinced me to change it.

In regard to WikiTree remaining in perpetuity.. see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Protecting_Our_Shared_Tree for details (one of the "More about the Organization" links at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:The_Free_Family_Tree

Cheers, Liz

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In the past I have not been entirely consistent about using "United States of America," but I intend to improve that and so the answer is yes.

John

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John, your comments are hard to address in any serious manner because it's really impossible to imagine the world 100 years from now.  If the people living then can find time to care about genealogy, that will be a good thing.  But really, I can't imagine a scenario in which people, assuming they still have and care about on-line genealogy, would have forgotten what "USA" means.

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Julie, I agree with you that it is difficult to accurately imagine the world 100 years from now, especially as the rate of change continues to increase. However, with all due respect, your response proves my point. You can't imagine a future in which "people... would have forgotten what USA means" demonstrates my point that those living in an empire generally assume it will never end or be forgotten. Personally, I can think of several scenarios in which the use of the United States of America and its abbreviation could either be forgotten or become associated with something else, but where genealogy remains important. But then, I am an avid “after the disaster” sci-fi reader so I have lots of ideas to draw from. Come to think of it, that would be a good basis for a sci-fi novel.

Empires come and go and so do abbreviations. Abbreviations that might have been obvious to a reader 100 years ago may not be so to us now and we cannot assume that current abbreviations will continue in use unchanged into the future.

Even a cursory perusal of a list of empires and other past geopolitical entities will show how quickly they can be forgotten. There are any number of G2G questions about the names of the political entities that make up the current USA should be called prior to the existence of the Union or their admittance to it. Admittedly that is, for the most part, over than 100 years in the past, however, even recent empires can quickly become comparatively unknown. How many people are familiar with the Dutch Empire, the Portuguese empire or the Ottoman empire, all of which ended less than 100 years ago.

I am also confused at why you might think that genealogy would remain an on-line activity, or by inference that even some remnants of Wikitree data could not end up as a hard copy record somewhere. I have hard copy of every piece of genealogical information in my family tree (like dozens of binders full) some of it taken from Wikitree. There is stuff in those binders that I have no idea of what the authors are talking about, and I do not assume that my progeny will understand all of my notes. Heck, I am not even sure some of them will be able to read my cursive writing.

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Hi again. This discussion is one of the reasons that I closed the question. John, you say

There are any number of G2G questions about the names of the political entities that make up the current USA should be called prior to the existence of the Union or their admittance to it.

Yes, there are. The result of those discussions can be found at WikiTree's North American Place Names, which has a section on The US Historical Place Names Spreadsheet that links to the Google sheet: United States Historical Place Names

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I am quite aware of those links, but they are not the point I was trying to make. In any case I agree that further discussion is likely irrelevant. Everyone has their own opinions of what is correct and Wilitree standards are, for the most part, way too loose to provide any sort of real standardization. Still better than any other genealogy site. :-)