New feature: multilingual names and biographies

Liu Yao,
Thanks for the update. With these changes, is there a best practice for how to enter Chinese data?

For example, how do you indicated 字, 號, and 諱 names? How do you enter the names of wives? Do you include ”氏“ if so what is the English equivalent? Should we use the middle name field, or just the surname and first name fields? What should the display name be?

Also, where's the best place to enter generation numbers?

In the past, a lot of this data was placed in the display name field, which couldn't be exported to GEDCOM.

My recommendation:
For the wife, the 氏 I usually place in the name suffix. It is not truly a middle name nor a given name, least a surname.
There used to be a miscellaneous section which transferred to GEDCOM. If GEDCOM is important to you, then enter information under relationship and check that it is exported to GEDCOM. If it does, I would also include the different type of names in relationship. I have not tested the export (GEDCOM IS important to me) but there is HTML or Rich Text formatting in relationship, and GEDCOM will not support that type of coding.
Generation number is very Chinese, but as Einstein says, everything is relative. From what starting point do you start the first generation? Again, I would put it into the relationship IF it is exported to a GENI GEDCOM. Geni and very few vendors do not support any genealogical numbering system. Most westerners use the ahnentafel system, which does not accurately apply to Chinese genealogy.
IMHO

Great to have a discussion going :)

We agree that there are special needs for Chinese genealogy, and Geni can't adequately address these at the moment. What this new feature allows is the possibility of implementing a naming system without having to make compromises with other languages. I sure will bring our suggestions to Geni staff once they are done fixing bugs that this new feature creates. At the top of our list should be making surname+given name (no space in between) the default display name.

As for where to put different names, my own way goes like this:
名, which is the same as 諱, goes in First Name;
字 and 號, along with alternative 名 that the person had used, all go in Also Known As, separated by commas. I don't currently have a way to keep track which is 字 and which is 號 (and sometimes the sources don't agree which is which).

Of course we should put all the 字 and 號 in the About Me, as is customary in historical documents (followed by the place where he or his family was from, followed by highest degree he obtained and successive posts he served, etc. etc.) Having these names in Also Known As is important for searching and comparing (when merging) purposes.
I try not to use Middle Name, Suffix, and Prefix (if Geni decides to revive it), and I almost always leave Birth Surname blank.

For women, Geni annoyingly does not accept a profile without a first name, and my work-around is to put ? as the first name, and fill in the display name as X氏. I would like to make it automatic. I also identify in display name if she is a "succeeding" wife 繼, or a concubine 妾 (I probably should also say it if she is the first wife).

I found it useful to also include the birth order, in Chinese and in parenthesis. Though may not appear in the jiapu, this oftentimes is the identifier found in oral history and personal letters.

As for generational numbers, I know Private User maintains this system that was cryptic to me when I first saw it. With full respect to his hard work, I'm always a little reserved regarding this. Here's something that of course isn't a perfect solution: If you mark the first generation ancestor as the focus (click on the push-pin on top right), then when you go to other profiles it will say on top that this is the n-th great grandson of XXX, or you may have to click it for Geni to compute. You have to mentally convert n to n+3 or something.

Anyways, I guess I haven't said anything different from what I would have said a week ago. Sadly we haven't had any discussion among the Chinese users, at least not I'm aware of. Please invite others to this project so they can join the discussion.

In Chinese genealogical records, there are many adoptions shown. I normally would like to trace both biological side as well as the adopted side. To do this I link both sides as “partner”. It would be great if Geni could include another category, say “adoption”, into the relationship to allow both the biological and adopted family lines to be included.

Private User
I appreciate you sharing best practices. Why do you avoid the middle name and suffix fields?
Not allowing empty first name fields can be very frustraing

Hi 守 衡 周,
You suggested placing various information in the relationship. Can you explain where those fields are in Geni? I can't find a place for 氏 or generational numbering on the relationship tab.

Kenneth Jeffrey Hong 曾啟賢, I mistated. I am not a power user like Private User nor Private User. What I meant was that to add the information in the 'ABOUT' section, not the 'Relationship' section.
There was a Chinese Genealogy forum discussion about this: The link: http://siyigenealogy.proboards.com/post/7910/thread and http://siyigenealogy.proboards.com/post/8877/thread .
To answer my own question to Private User in a previous post, the reason to avoid middle names is that GEDCOM does not support that field. The middle name is merely appended to the given name. GEDCOM does support suffix, prefix, nick names.

Private User
"As for where to put different names, my own way goes like this:
名, which is the same as 諱, goes in First Name;
字 and 號, along with alternative 名 that the person had used, all go in Also Known As, separated by commas. I don't currently have a way to keep track which is 字 and which is 號 (and sometimes the sources don't agree which is which)."
Could you identify a profile which shows this? I would like an example to add to my 'Best Practices" collection.

I hesitate to say mine is the "best practice", but if you want an example, see Li Hung Chang 李鴻章.

(Please also see his Timeline, where I record the "dates" in Chinese. I would like to see more use of the Timeline, which I think is a great feature.)

The GEDCOM export function is working again. It provides a choice to export in Chinese or in English. So, it sounds like the data would have to be merged back together if you want to export a family tree with both English and Chinese data for the same profiles.

Will have to test later.

The GEDCOM separate language export should be a bug (IMO). It is incongruous that anyone would want their information separated by language. I haven't searched the Geni Forum but I bet there is an incident number regarding this.
Even though the display name is not saved to GEDCOM, does the AKA get saved to GEDCOM?

The Geni GEDCOM exports do include multiple NICK names. For example:
1 NAME Hock How /Hong/
2 GIVN Hock How
2 SURN Hong
2 NICK 學厚
2 NICK 憢傳
2 NICK John How

I got a response from Mike Stangel:

We considered including multiple language names in GEDCOM export but decided against it, as GEDCOM is especially poor at handling this. There's no way for the GEDCOM to represent which language a particular name represents, which means we'd be creating a terrible mess that if it were imported back into Geni or MyHeritage, would then end up getting mixed into the "also known as" field instead of going back into translated names. So instead every profile in the export gets one name, but you can choose which primary language you're interested in -- if you select Chinese for your export, you'll get the Chinese names if they exist; otherwise English if it exists, otherwise some other language.

I guess you'll need to keep the Chinese also in "Also Known As" if you want to use GEDCOM.

Seems to me that not having an effective way to export to GEDCOM defeats the purpose of these new features.

People for whom GEDCOM is important will gravitate to using the "AKA" field and possible ignore the secondary language fields altogether.

After having used the new system for some time, I can at least make one very minor suggestion:

Now Geni seems to accept empty first names, though not when creating a new profile. The trick is to put a space in the first name field, and upon saving, Geni will automatically delete unwanted spaces, leaving an empty first name.

(It's best to avoid using "wife" or other words in name fields, as they will be taken as names and be matched with other profiles. Just my purist view. Not too big a deal.)

Hi everyone,

It's been more than a year, and without any imminent changes to this feature I can describe the naming system I have settled down to, which I am pretty comfortable with for several months now. I've been using it from the Six Dynasties to Chinese-Americans.

Under Chinese (Traditional), fill his 名 (also indicated by 諱 in sources) in First Name field, his surname 姓氏 in Last Name field, and all other names (字, 號, 原名, 譜名, 諡) in Also Known As. Fill in the display name with the correct ordering, i.e. 姓+名, followed by birth order in parentheses (if important), and after a space another set of parentheses with his best known 字 in it. If a 號 (which was only employed by literary figures in Tang and Song, but it seems by the Qing everyone had to have one) is also used fairly often, put that after 字 (separated by a space) within the same parentheses. People tend to have multiple 字 and 號 through their life, so I'd put it in display name only when I've seen it in use in contemporary documents. Again I'm not identifying the name type explicitly, leaving such details to the About Me.

Emperors, other nobilities, civil officials who achieved distinction, may have posthumous names or fiefdoms that are better known than their actual names. Put that only in display name, shortened if necessary, preceding his personal name (and set off by a space).

Sima Guang 司馬光
Liú Chè 劉徹, Emperor Wu of Han

If the person lived in the West (or elsewhere), for long or short, and has used an English or Romanized name, or he is so famous that he is generally known in the West (e.g. Chiang Kai-shek), enter his English/Romanized names in First/Middle/Last name fields under English (default) as they naturally fit. In the English (default) display name, enter his Romanized name as he would use himself (that is, surname may come first, or in the middle), followed by his name in Chinese characters that the Romanization corresponds to. This has become the standard to write Chinese name in Western scholarly writings, that is, not to shy away from Chinese characters which all computers/handheld devices now are equipped to display properly. If he is an ancient historical figure of general interest in the West, he should be known by the pinyin romanization. Do not put pinyin in the First and Last name fields, only put it in display name under English (default). I still hope that Geni could automatically show pinyin based on the Chinese characters.

This way, the English-speaking users see the Romanized name as well as the Chinese characters, but without all the appendages that the Chinese display name has.

Examples:
Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, President of Republic of China
V. K. Wellington Koo 顧維鈞
Yo-Yo Ma 馬友友

It's a good practice for Hong Kong, Southeast Asians to CAPitalize their surnames, as already being done. It is not as necessary for Chinese-Americans, so I leave them in natural typecase, to conform with general Americans.

I always use traditional characters as they themselves would use (I rarely use the Chinese (simplified) tab at all, though I've done extensive site translation there). For recent profiles that do use simplified characters, they are likely to be living, hence private, so the user of course is entitled to do whatever they want with names.

I'll probably put all this in the main body of the project at some point.

There has been a major enhancement for Chinese names, so the above post is partially obsolete. I'll describe the changes and put the "best practice" in the project description.

(It just hits me that it has little use to others if I'm describing things in English, but to be able to implement it you have to know, or at least be comfortable with, Chinese characters, which poses a big learning curve for overseas Chinese.)

Liu Yao,
Thanks for your updates. Can you let me know where you'll be describing the changes and "best practices"? I'm not sure which project page to which you're referring.

Also, as an overseas Chinese, I value your updates in English. With pinyin, touch pads with for character input, and OCR, I think it's becoming much easier for us 華僑 to be comfortable with Chinese characters, while being completely illiterate in terms of reading Chinese text.

--Ken

Thanks for your feedback. I haven't got around putting it into words. The most important change is now that surname comes before given names, if you use the Chinese tab (either traditional or simplified) when editing names.

Other changes may seem a bit strange if you use English as the interface language on the site. Taking things into my hand, I've repurposed all the other fields which have had little use for Chinese names. Here you go:

Middle name now holds one's courtesy name and literary name (if applicable), and will appear in parentheses at the end. (Philip Tan has been doing it all along, except not under Chinese tab.)

Suffix becomes the birth order in one's generation, particularly useful when other name data are missing. I suppose some overseas Chinese continue to refer to their uncles as "uncle #3" or the like. I use Chinese characters (一二三for 1st, 2nd 3rd; but you can put other things as long as you like the outcome).

Maiden name (labeled birth surname) now is the geographical identifier, and it is placed before one's name in bracket. In traditional biographical account, it's the next item after one's various names, much like the toponym for historical European names.

I believe Geni now covers Chinese genealogy extremely well, and I'd encourage everyone to give it a try.

Those are a lot of changes. Now I need to go back and update entries.

Can you explain how the geographical id works? I've never heard of that before. Is that like Phillip of Gloucester or William of Orange? For Chinese entries, would that be the person's place of birth, residence, ancestral village or something else?

By geographical identifier I was deliberately vague. I use it mostly for people before the modern era (say before 1900), for whom there usually is a definite place where they call "home", even if they were not born there. If the question "where you or your family are from" doesn't have a meaning to you, then you probably don't need to use it.

For the (late) Qing period, I've been using province + county (usually four characters long) and not the village name. But others may include the village name, or whatever their lineage prefers to call themselves.

One added advantage is that the place name is now regarded as a surname in Geni, so you can find a page for it in the surname index, and find all profiles having this "surname". It even works in part, so just the county name alone is a surname. See, for example,

https://www.geni.com/surnames/%E5%90%88%E8%82%A5

Unfortunately the new name format does not work in treeview. Mike (the Geni boss) has noted it but can't promise when it will be fixed.

Dear Everyone,
My name is Joon, and I am a South Korean. From 2013 to 2015, I created a family tree. I thought it would end there, but it didn’t. In this period, I added at least 3,800 extensive profiles beyond my direct lineages, including major Korean historical figures. I then realized that all the profiles I had built were in private.

Because some of these profiles were linked to public historical figures, such as Kublai Khan, several members from this website either messaged or requested me to publicize them soon.

Since 2015, I was absent from this website, due to personal reasons. I returned here today to make some of the profiles in my family tree be public. I created these profiles in the following method:

In “Basics,” a profile is labeled private. Write default information in English. I didn’t create an alternate profile in the Korean language. The “names” are all in English.

This method was applied to all profiles in my tree. The plan I currently devise to resolve this massive issue is:

In “Basics,” relabel the profile as public. Write two sets of information: One in English, the other in Korean.

I apologize for overlooking this major flaw. I was immature back then. The plan above, if applied to all profiles (in my tree) this project involves, would definitely take a long time. I wish I had the time to revise my profiles. I plan to take this initiative later this month and next year. I would, if possible, give an update.

And some of these historical figures are legendary and from folklore. They are not real individuals. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it. I agree.

Hi Joon,

I’m glad that you introduced yourself here, and I may have come across your name but I can’t read Korean so I’m not 100% sure.

I will take a look at the profiles that you have created. In the meantime, did you figure out how to put Korean names under Korean tab so they come out in the surname-first format?