In historical documents we find a variety of place names and spellings. Once we standardize the place to make it readable and usable, the original entry is overwritten and the historical information lost to the database. This is especially annoying, if well-meaning enthusiasts in publicly available genealogical databases overwrite those places with their own imagination of what they mean and where they lie. Would it not be possible to ADD one filed in every fact that contains a “place”-field, in which we can only copy the verbatime transcription of the source document(s) to which we refer? Something like:
Place transcription(s):
Place:
Place details:
Description:
This would be a text-field like the Description field, that is not linked to any database, because the entries here are highly individual and should NOT be standardized, but simply transcribed from a specific source. Of course I do not know how in/compatible this would be with established standards and how to exchange such an information with Ancestry oder Family Search, but this topic is increasingly becoming a nuissance. Nobody wants to re-open and re-read hand-written sources to access this kind of information and with the late effort to standardize place names across boarders, this original information gets completely lost.
On the Place List I add historical place names and then on the Standard field use the current name of the location. If I needed a report to show the current name I add it to the fact notes.
Well, in principle I do the same. Albeit, the “historical place names” are not always the place names I start with. When I get an information form some genealogical database, it usually somehow points to the right locality but it is nearly never historically correct - so it’s on me to make it correct and that’s fine. Now, a very different case is it, if I get a place name from a historical document. Here as well it can be presented in many different ways, but this is “raw data”, which - I think - should be kept somewhere and it should not block the “place” line, because it is often just a village name which is not very enlightening without any further information about the administrative structure in which that village was embedded. In any case, as I have argues above, an additional field for holding “raw data” would be a very useful update, especially nowadays where the “place”-Line is becoming subject to all sorts of “standardisations”.
As far as I can tell, there is no real standard for place names. For example, on the older FamilySearch, a search term was “Germany”, but now this is broken into years and could end up in “Europe”. Other sites use some different terms. In RootsMagic, some put “county” after the county name, some put “USA” or just leave it off, while most put “United States”. If the fact is before 1776, do we say “British America” or some places say “British Colony”, or use the current state. When counties split, the issue multiplies.
I tried to use the description field to show the original place name when a person was born, but that took away a field. I added another fact (Birth original location) to use when I want to show the original county, or the place, as it is called now. This clutters up the page and is not transferred, but it helps me.
And, in the end, as I have gotten the younger generation involved, they say if it tells the story and makes it clearer, then forget everything else. That works for many things, but there has to be a balance. Some of the youngsters were surprised there was not more standards such as place names when sources seem to cause an upset if a semi-colon is used instead of a period. They had some interesting comments about the strict part of genealogy and the laxness in other parts, and a lack of understanding the real world.
I use the historical place name per most genealogy standards, but then customize the place with a further descriptor. For example: “Berkeley, Virginia (later West Virginia), United States”, “Rochesterville (later Rochester), Monroe, New York, United States” or “Lebanon, Chenango (later Madison), New York, United States”
It seems we have at least 3 Issues here.
- copying and then preserving the original entry from whatever document we have been consulting to retrieve the locality information for a certain fact.
- embedding the place information historically correct into the administrative/political environment of its time. To give one example: 1560‑01‑01 – 1805‑12‑31 “Schelklingen” had been “Schelklingen, Hsch. Schelklingen, Lvgtei. Schwaben (Vorderöst.), Habsburgische Erblande, HRR“, 1871-01-01 – 1918-11-30 it has been “Schelklingen, OA Blaubeuren, Kgr. Württemberg, Deutsches Kaiserreich“ next to every administrative unit incl. the Souvereign are different, albeit in this case at least the name of the locality is constant. In between those two periods there are 3 other distinct periods.
- having a standardized way of describing the - unchanging - coordinates of a locality on the map.
To me the only meaningful way to describe a locality is in its historically correct setting - described in 2) - with no contemporary additions. This adds a wealth of information. Then for 3) we do have already an additional line in the places database, even if it leaves much to be wished for. What we are still lacking is a dedicated line in the places database which would hold the dates for the period in which a certain administrative embedding of the locality was valid - as in the example for 2). Right now I use the “notes”, but that’s not ideal. And, of course, we would need an additional line not in the places database but in the facts themselves, which would hold the raw data from the source(s) from which we draw the fact.