I have English ancestors in the very early 1800s who lived in difficult times with poverty, low life expectancy, societal breakdown and the law impacting their lives. One of the side effects was the apparent need to change, reversibly sometimes, both first names and surnames when it suited them. The DNA trail confirms this happened but it makes the genealogy challenging. It was a common tradition for other local families in the community .
My real question is whether there is a preferred way in Roots Magic 8 to enter this data and for the data to be accessed by other software? In addition, there are the normal transcription errors and spelling variants to deal with. Using aka seems to confuse the software.
As you noted, there are multiple reasons why a person may change names - including mis-spelling in official records. I include as many AltName facts as necessary, so that each variation can have attached citations. I use the SortDate to group & order those variations.
Many thanks for your thoughts. mike