Sir William de Brereton - Correct titles

You're right about using Sir and Knight. This topic is covered in the Naming Conventions for Knights project:
http://www.geni.com/projects/Naming-Conventions-for-Knights/11429

As far as post-nominal numbers, there have been quite a few debates about it. Out of all those discussions two points stand out:

* Most contemporary Americans no longer follow the traditional rule about numbering only living generations. Indeed, most are not aware there was such a rule.

* Except for royalty and sometimes the highest nobility, our European ancestors didn't number themselves. So, the numbers are only a genealogical convenience and were never part of their "real" names. Nevertheless, users are split about whether to use them and if so how.

@http://www.geni.com/path/Judy+Rice+is+related+to+Sir+William+de+Bre... is my 1st cousin 18 times removed i did not know his name was changed thks for letting me know Judy Rice

I agree about the sir knight, however when sorting out a families with 12 generations of people, sometimes with no birth or death dates, it's very helpful to sometimes gives them a number, at least temporarily. I try to assign their main property holdings to the as this helps as well. Many of the old genealogical resources will state " and this Robert was the third of his name from Adlington" and that's all we can get until further cross referencing can be done. The Breretons are my family as well, so will probably be working on them at some point during this whole Chesire research. It's a work in progress.

I also wanted to add that many existing profiles do not include yet the actual rank of the individual in question . When you get back into the early Norman years in Britain, the government wasn't so formalized , but in wills and land documents I'm translating they refer to each other as Viscounts or Dukes, or Engineers, et al, which is key to sorting out identities of people who show up in military actions in historical research that seems to support things like claims of rank, marriage, acknowledged illegitimacy, etc.