Genealogy from the perspective of a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, LDS)

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Is there a minimum confidence level for name submission?

I received the following comment from a reader:
I helped out with a ward youth temple trip tonight and one of the names we did was truly epic. It was: "Isabella Ann or Anne or Annie or [Other name I can't remember] [Last Name] or [Last name, different spelling] or [Last name, different spelling] or [Last name, different name]"
Born: about 1785 or 1786 or 1827 or 1840
England
I thought about this and looked at to see if there was some rule concerning name submissions that would affect this particular case. None of the words used is listed in the "Names and symbols causing Needs More Information Error." I find no other articles in the Get Help section of FamilySearch.org that would seem to address this issue.

From a very realistic standpoint, it is apparent that the person identified in the submission was certainly more than one individual in more than two generations. It is further apparent that absolutely no effort was made to verify this individual prior to submission, entries were probably just copied out of records containing the same or similar names. Why is this acceptable?

2 comments:

  1. I have never seen one this bad, but continue to be perplexed at some submissions. These submitters must not realize that all of these names will have any work duplicated because no one will ever combine these names with another.

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  2. A friend of mine in Idaho who works in the temple sent me this letter after reading your blog. I thought you'd find this interesting and supportive.
    "Working in the temple office, I have seen it all. Recently a couple FORs that bugged us included things like "Mister Jones" and "Mrs. Jones", constructed so that a child could be sealed to them. As we all know, if everyone did that, we all could just extend our lines infinitely. Ridiculous. Also, people now are typing "Uknown" instead of "Unknown" because Unknown will not print if typed in the given name field but Uknown will. That's one way to circumvent the rules. Rules are there for a reason people. James asked if there is any standard and the only answer is a temple recorder can pull someone aside and speak to them about their names. Ask them where they got them and advise them. It's probably not likely they will flat-out refuse to let them do them (unless there is blatant misuse of the program) but the recorder could strongly urge them in one way or another.

    By the way, last night we had a woman drop off a few FORs for some youth to pick up cards for baptisms tonight. One had about 40 names and all but 2 were born within the 110 year limit. And they were from places all over the US and England. We felt in the office that the youth had to be breaking the 110 year rule. So we left a note on the cards telling them to be sure they were the closest relative or that they had permission from them. I know they had to click through and say that already once in FS, but hopefully a personal urging from the temple will actually sink in."

    Amy Floto

    This discussion goes to the heart of training needed by novice users, and integrity be all users.

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