Oh no, not another Geni bug!

Maven, that’s by design: the idea is that the modern name of a country will show so we can GPS it, and that way, we can enter in the country field the historic name of the place. A good example is that we Americans are conscious of 1776, but there isn’t a standardized country name for what is now the United States of America, so most entries are USA, when it should properly be British Empire or whatever. (I use Colonial America). So eventually Geni should be able to date bind country name entry, and in fact has been able to show that for some key dates.

Unfortunately google locations auto complete maps Province to England and County to United Kingdom, so I delete out the Province name, leaving it blank, and re enter Scotland, Wales, and England to the country field. Geni then fills in (United Kingdom).

Are you entering via comma separated, or expanding the Location field and attempting to enter into the individual Location parts?

Beginning with comma separation, then trying to fix via expanded Location. But it won't fix.

I can replicate the problem.

Erica, Are you saying the appending of "(United Kingdom)" is to indicate the modern location? That seems super confusing.

As a test I tried both Country of Scotland in the field, and Kingdom of Scotland in the field. Geni left Country of Scotland alone, but appended the "(United Kingdom)" string to Kingdom of Scotland.

I'm not a fan if this is a "feature".

It is a feature, and requested a long time ago.

So now Geni has people kvetching about it, wanting to know why the Location field is anti-historical.

Can't win for losing.

Personally I prefer that location fields tells what the place is called today and can be mapped onto a modern map.

It is better that you in the about me tells what the historical name was, i.e. you quote the sources correctly.

Well, I’d like both. :). It drives me crazy to see USA for a country when it didn’t exist. On the other hand, the map of Europe was a constantly moving target (from our current day perspective), so the modern name and place, confirmed by GPS, is enormously useful.

Working without the google location service is painful as we might remember when we lost access. My fantasy Is that Geni has built up enough of a “historic name database” to offer it, probably an extra location field is needed. But for the country problem, we can now serve two masters in one field. Enter England in the country field and (United Kingdom) auto appends. If you hover mouse there’s also some dates available, which is great. So far, better than before.

Geni does that already, but currently only curators have access to add historical names and update that database, - I do that almost every day, but it has been quiet from Geni on what the further development on this is.

https://www.geni.com/manage-locations

Today you can define time period for that name as an example, but I have not seen it used on suggested names yet. What I miss most is adding geographic areas with a name. and period, so I have used it most to add name and GPS coordinates to locations that does not exist anymore.

Everybody can add the names they want, not just Curators, as long as they expand the fields. That is the only way I will do location data. I hate the autofill. Can live with the extra occasionally in parentheses, at least so far.

Yes, everyone can add manually field by field, - the database I mention above is a way to get historical correct autofill.