Distinguishing people with the same name - ideas welcome

It can help to fill all fields with the known data and adding all known related profiles
Using the AKA field may help as well if persons have a different short use name.
For people in the same family using the suffix may help.
Having some info in the about may also help.

But I'm afraid for some users nothing helps but making MP profiles (and sometimes they will need locking the relations and fields).

Get reliable data on Birth, Confirmation, Marriage and Death dates. Witnesses at baptisms (often the witnesses are the parents siblings). Probates. Censuses (who lives with whom). Death records (they often mention husband, wife, children and a few times siblings). Obituaries and funeral records.

Remi, we don’t have fields for some of the data you mention, such as baptism witnesses.

That one caught my eye because it’s very helpful in New Netherland Colony profile.

Is there a format in the “about” biography that might be useful?

Job, what would you put in a suffix?

It is also useful to know how the children were named after their grandparents in some parts of the world (naming rules). In northern Europe this was more or less mandatory during a long period of time. For instance if fathers's father first name was Ole and mothers's father first name was Ole, the first two sons needed to be named Ole since it was customary (and more or less mandatory) to name the children after their grandparents and both grandfathers needed to be recognized.

Add sources

Erica, if there is a link to the actual prime source, like a picture of the churchbook, I would download the picture or link to the page. I would also transcribe the source and write it in the about if there wasn't a possibility to link or show the source.

A description somewhere on how to add an URL as a source could be useful.
Explaining how to add multiple profiles to a source (without adding the source multiple times) would also be useful.

What I do
1. Master both profiles
2. Add disambiguation info into suffix
3. Lock name fields
4. Add curator notes
5. If particularly problematic - relationship lock and master immediate family

What sort of disambiguating information could we add?

I see:

• military ranks
• occupations, particularly in middle name position e.g. John “the miller” Smith
• numbers.
  • If multiple children with same name in the family, perhaps John (1) Smith, John (2) Smith
  • if dynastic - medieval, add to first name. John I Smith
  • if dynastic - modern, suffix. John Smith, I
• toponyms, for example: John Smith, of New Haven
• immigration, for example: John Smith, of the ‘Bevis’
• notability, for example: John Smith, pioneer

Job Waterreus - where are you suggesting this article be shown? Are you thinking as a pop up in the name fields?

https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229705427-How-do-I-tag-a-pr...

Birth year to death year
1901-1966

Country or location

Erica Howton I'm not sure about where to place it. If it was in the Help section it would be hard to make multiple language versions, so I think a project page would probably be better. It may be nice to have something in the help section linking to a multi-language project page.

In Estonia / Estonian we have too suffixes with Roman numbers I, II, III, IV etc. if the same family had multiple children with the same nime (except the last one, all died during birth or very soon).
The same I, II, III, IV etc. are used for generations too, especially if there are more than 2 generations with the same name. With 2 names is simple - father is Sen (Senior) and son is Jun (Junior) - why Sen and Jun are not recognised suffixes in Geni (in English i.e, in Latin Alphabet)?
If fathernal line had more than 2 generations with the same name (each firstborn son was John, then also) I, II, III, IV etc.

But if there will be special icons like MP, G, C, collaborator, pending merge etc. in all 3 views (profile, tree, list/listing) then I prefer to have additional ones:
A) twin, B) triplet, C) died young, D) never married, E) never had children, F) lost in war / during war, G) also special icons for children / siblings with the same name

That you can convert a web link to a document and use that as a source is a bit hidden.
That you can convert a weblink to a document is mentioned in https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229705367-How-can-I-add-a-D... but many users do not know about this.
In https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229705427-How-do-I-tag-a-pr... is mentioned how to tag profiles to a document, but even so many users create separate documents for each profile (if they do use sources, which most users do not do).

As most users do not add sources it may help to have region/language specific instructions and examples, which could be done with multi-language projects.

It may help to prompt users to give at least an estimate (like a date range or before or after a date or a country for a location) when they leave a field empty.

Lauri Kreen Isn Australia we would abbreviate it as Snr and Jnr

From here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_(name)#Generational_titles
and here:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namenszusatz#Junior

I expect that in Latin alphabet (English) Geni shall handle equally Sr. Sr Snr. Snr Sen. Sen Senr. Senr AND Jr. Jr Jnr. Jnr Jun. Jun Junr. Junr (as they are from Latin)

In different languages (if chosen) also variants of Older O. and Younger Y. like in German Ältere Ä. and Jüngere J.

I had forgotten to mention relationship descriptions in name fields, although I tend to use display name for that. These are often record based.

• Mary, wife of John Smith
• daughter of John Smith
• John (of Henry) Smith

Genealogy report narrative often assigns the generation number as a suffix:

• John3 (Henry2, John1) Smith

And tabular reports assign calculated numbers:

• third generation, # 131 John Smith, son of second generation, # 12 Henry Smith …

These report numbers can be stored in the “add data” field on the basics tab.

That’s also a convenient place to add other distinguishing report data, such as Patriot #.

Lauri Kreen Which countries use them?

Just send a list to Mike to add them to the list.

I collected them from English Wiki + German Wiki (under English language) - 2 links

Here is an example of what I do when 2 people are confused

Mary Ann Robinson
Mary Ann Kemp

Both curated, names locked.

Sources in timeline.

I created a project for Naming Convention for Suffixes

https://www.geni.com/projects/Naming-Conventions-Suffix-Abbreviations-Post-Nominal/4496611

Because display names overwrite user display preferences (particularly on women) I try very much not to use them. (I get much less abuse from users)

If I know that someone married the daughter of someone I will use the first name field and put it inside {} to show it is not a name.

Ie {daughter of Alexander Mackenzie 4th of Davochmaluag]

{daughter of Alexander Mackenzie 4th of Davochmaluag} Gray