Consider the audience for your data. Would any need the disambiguation that including the country name provides? Former British colonies are rife with place names that duplicate those in the UK.
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Waltham Forest is a London borough created in 1965 by the Local Government Act 1963 from areas that were all previously in Essex; accordingly prior to that all events were in the county of Essex. That is the same all around London, Barnet, for example, was in Hertfordshire (not the London Borough of Barnet); the county of Middlesex was abolished; Croydon etc were stripped from Surrey and so on. Having said that there are numerous people who still put traditional counties in their addresses.
Thatās exactly what I thought when I started genealogy decades ago. Now, however, I am finding it an increasing burden, for the reasons that Rene states, and such as if I wanted to use Family Atlas or any other facility based outside the UK.
Iāve now decided to bite the bullet and include the country on all my place names from now on. With over 500 places, I was just looking for an easy way to do it.
I think the expression is āDoh!ā
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I always add England, Wales, Scotland etc to an address, as appropriate, but have never bothered with UK in addition to that. It has always seemed a bit redundant to me but would it help with hints? Or is there anything else that Iām missing?
I donāt publish my tree in any way so the only people looking at it would be Ancestry users looking at the Ancestry version of my tree.
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I do exactly the same. RM7 added United Kingdom/Great Britain to my address which I have been actively trying to remove ever since. Unlike the US we do not have federal records and state records (hence the need for USA); Scottish records are held in Scotland, English and Welsh ones in England. Historic Irish civil records for the whole of Ireland are mainly held in the Republic of Ireland (although that is a separate country to the North). Personally I donāt think that youāre missing anything Graham.
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- Level 1: Country:
The UK is comprised of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
- Level 2: Region/County:
These are larger administrative divisions within each country. Examples include:
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England: Counties (e.g., Yorkshire, Devon), or Metropolitan Counties (e.g., Greater Manchester).
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Scotland: Council Areas (e.g., Glasgow City, Fife).
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Wales: County Boroughs (e.g., Cardiff, Newport).
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Northern Ireland: Districts (e.g., Belfast, Derry).
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Level 3: District/Borough:
These are smaller administrative areas within the regions/counties, often with local government responsibilities.
- Level 4: Town/Village/Settlement:
The smallest level, referring to specific populated areas
Iāve always tried to geocode my places and use the standard name and 98% of my places are UK. The one feature from RM7 that 10 lacks (unless Iām missing something) is the option to replace the place name with the standard place name which was very useful.
Renee, your comment the other day about including the country to help with hint results : does RM look at the place name or the standard place name for this?
I know youāve directed your question at Renee, but Iāll just point out that Place Name has to be whatās looked at, because Standard is an optional field and potentially oftentimes blank (empty). Itās only populated by either activating RMās geocoding feature -or- manually entering data in all those fields.
Thanks kbens0n, youāre right of course. I didnāt phrase my question very well. What I was thinking was if the Standard field has been populated, especially perhaps if geocoding has been activated, then this would be surely the best one to use for hinting results. I think RM should look at Standard first and then only if that field wis empty, then look at Place Name as a second best choice.