Naming for my family tree

[Diane Stolen]

I'm from the US, Minnesota orginally. [i apologize in advance for not knowing Norwegian.] I have used the wonderful Digitalarkivet databases with great results. All of my ancestors are from Norway, and almost all of them used their farm names when they came to America (1860 - 1911)so I enter their names as follows, for example: Elias Johannesen Stolen, or Rasmus Knudsen Hoialmen. So I have followed the same procedure when entering all of my Norwegian ancestors that I've found and/or confirmed by looking in Digitalarkivet. I add the farm names, but then I end up sometimes with two or even three farm names along with the first name, and father's name. A person may have been born on one farm and died on another. Does anyone have advice on whether this is correct? Genealogy software programs don't have a data field for this extremely important aspect of Norwegian names. Please help.

Diane

[My ancestors were from Hagen and Stolen from Solund/Gulen, Sogn of Fjordane, from Hoialmen [Hoyalmen] in Stryn/Innvik, Sogn og Fjordane, and Skeie, Rauland/Vinje, Telemark.]

[Leif Biberg Kristensen]

Just keep pestering the genealogy software producers about it :)

 

I have developed my own program with fields for patronyms and farm names (toponyms), to a large part because I got fed up with the Anglo-American genealogy programs' inability to store Norwegian names half decently. I'm sorry that my program has not reached a state of maturity sufficient to unleash it on the world at large.

 

That being said, I think that it's correct to record all the farm names. I'm separating them with a slash, like 'Tor Mathiassen Bolvik / Sti / Haukelien', but that's a matter of taste.

[Anne-Lise Hansen]

I think some programs allow you to have alternative names or multiple names, at least John Steed's program Brother's Keeper. Here is a link to Norway List at Rootsweb, where this was discussed in january: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/NORWAY/2011-01/1295046099. (There may also be more threads with this theme that I am not aware of, but you can search in previous postings.)

[Harald Søren Storaker]

I register persons born in rural areas before 1900 with their given name, their patronym and the farm name (where born). If they move to town, or emigrate and establish a family surname, I add that as a new name. If they move around to other farms, I only register that as new residences.

The important thing is that you are consistent in the way you do it, regardless of how it is done in the source you use. You must know how to interpret your own records.

[Niels Hegge]

I use Legacy and it has as most serious programs a possibility to enter multiple names. However, I will usually use the place of birth as surname and add the others as "notes". This is how I started and I see no advantage of it over multiple surnames.

[Håvard Moe]

The software I use (The Master Genealogist) is one of many where you can register multiple name "tags". For rural population (i.e. most of the people I have registered), I use First name + Patronymic + Farm as name tag. In the cases where I have several "addresses" for one person, I register separate name tags with date and source reference.

 

I can also register different types of name tags. When registering the primary name tags I use normalised name versions to help in searches and identification. In addition, I use one special tag type to register original name as used in the source. Thus, one person can have a lot of different names registered.

 

Example (fictious):

 

Jon Andersson Berg (1745-1817)

• Primary name tag: Jon Andersson Berg (source: baptism records, 1745)
  
• Original name tag: Joen Berrig (source: baptism records, 1745)
  
• Secondary name tag: Jon Andersson Haug (source: marriage records, 1766)
  
• Original name tag: Joen Anders: Hough (source: marriage records, 1745)
  
• Original name tag: John Andersen Houg (source: census records, 1801)
  
• Original name tag: Jon Andreassen Houge (source: burial records, 1817)

 

 

This way I can keep track of the variants, and can also easier match him when the name pops up in sources.