Genealogy Chat

Wendy, good one, 'former names'. :-)

Scottish certificates use the term m.s. (Maiden surname) rather than formerly when giving the name of the mother on birth, marriage and death registrations.

Also, it wasn't too uncommon for widows to be listed on the 1841 in Scotland using their maiden surname. In fact there are quite a few examples of married women listed using their maiden surname on the 1841 Scottish census even although they are living with their husbands. Then again in Scotland we women tend to retain our maiden surnames with married surnames for legal purposes. For example a Mary Brown marries a Mr. Smith then later marries a Mr. Green, on legal documents she would be Mary Brown or Smith or Green.

Perhaps Ancestry should change the add maiden name to Former Names that would cover any name used.be it man or woman.

heh, what would you call the surname my ancestor used when he married, which was not the surname he was born with? :-)

the standard French equivalent is 'née', which simply means 'born'

'maiden name' is not a formal or official term ... on children's birth certificates in the 1800s, for instance, the mother was 'formerly' ... no space for 'maiden name' ... it is used on some forms today by convention only

exceptions prove (test) rules!

I have also seen official information that defines a mother's maiden name as her last name when she was born, and then refers to her adoptive last name at marriage if she was adopted

and you do understand that there are social objections to the term 'maiden name', since 'maiden' really means 'virgin', and nobody ever concerns themselves with the groom's past exploits :-)

I guess 'name before first marriage' would cover it all !

the thing in this case is that what people will most likely know and be referring to when they add info at Ancestry is in fact a woman's birth surname ... so maybe there should be separate category for 'name at time of first marriage' ...

Hi mgnv,

I agree birth names and maiden names can be different I have some women on my trees using step fathers names too. Being able to add births names would be an idea too as males sometimes changed their names too. My great grand father never used his birth name, on 2 census he used his step fathers name and then when he married he used his middle name of Allsopp as his surname and was always know as Allsopp after that, took me years to find out his birth name.

Joonie - I don't know why you think birth surname is more accurate than maiden surname - they're two difft things - a maiden surname is the surname used when a woman first marries, and this may well not be her birth surname. My niece is an example - her maiden surname was the name she'd used for the previous 10 y, viz, her stepfather's surname.

it has been there since time immemorial ... or at least when I started using Ancestry a decade ago ... :-)

it used to be called 'birth surname' which was more useful and accurate

the problem is that Ancestry offers all these options for the reason why the addition is made ... but actually when a user clicks to see the added info, the reason why it is there is not shown at all

for instance I have added two names to a record of an ancestor of mine ... one is their birth name and the other is the correct spelling of their name in the census ... all that is shown is my explanations, but no label like 'birth name' or 'name change' or 'incorrect in image' that I had to check when I added the info ... so the whole thing would have been a complete mystery to anyone looking, if I hadn't explained!

so it is useful for people who add info to state why, but very very few do ...

OK, I concede that Ancestry does have a slot for Maiden Name. I think that must be a fairly recent addition. I have no objection to that as it oviously gets marked as such.

JoonieCloonie you explained better then I could have done :-D :-D

I would also like to added that if no one added maiden names what about the census where the couple didn't marry but down as married.

by the way I would also add that Ancestry itself does this

when a married woman is living in her parents' household and is shown as their daughter, Ancestry's system automatically adds her birth surname to their record in square brackets just as if a user had added the info

the problem is that this is not uncommonly incorrect, for instance if she was the daughter of her mother by a previous marriage ... or if the household is one of those mashups Ancestry creates when people are mistranscribed as being all in one household ...

I would rather see information added by someone who might at least have the correct information :-)

Ancestry has a category for 'Maiden Name' when you click to add a name to a census record.

why on earth would someone object to this being added?

Ancestry's records are not some sort of official document, they are a database compiled by Ancestry to which users can add information for the benefit of other users

that information is just called 'alternate information' and it is clearly marked as contributed by a user and shows the user's name ... I don't see anything there about 'amendment' even where something clearly is an amendment of an Ancestry error

has no one every tried to find a woman after marriage when they did not know whom she had married? you can search by given name and date and place of birth ... but if her name was Mary Smith and she was born in London you might be searching a long time and might never find her

if someone who knows more about her adds her birth surname to her census record after marriage, you will be able to find her, why would you object to that?

I also do it the other way around, add a woman's married surname to her census record before marriage (and also add other kinds of name changes, like a child who takes a stepfather's surname in later life), all to help anyone else looking for that person ... and so anyone else looking for that person finds me too, and I have met distant relations that way

I started doing this a long time ago and there is another effect now too that wasn't there in the early years, Ancestry automatically shows other records that may relate to a person ... it uses user-added information for putting together that list, so you don't even have to do the search sometimes, the system finds it for you (and of course that has to be checked out like anything else)

a woman's name changed with marriage but a name is just a name, her identity did not change, there is no reason that someone should not indicate the other names by which she had been or would be known in order to identify her for others ... by the way there has never been anything 'legal' about women using their husband's surname in the sense that the law required it, it is pure tradition and nothing else

I do think that people who add information to records should take the 10 seconds to add an explanation, like 'name when born', since even if you do select 'Maiden Name' Ancestry no longer shows that I think

complaining about someone adding helpful information, I just don't understand ... I can understand someone being snooty about being told off for doing something the site they pay to use encourages! :-D

When an amendment is done Ancestry does not say so on the Transcript so why should they if its added info.

When you add a maiden name you do it under "add alternate name" not as a amendment you can also do this for year of birth, age and place of birth if they are different to what is on census.

Perhaps then it would be a good idea if Ancestry showed this as an extra submission rather than amendment.
An amendment suggests that the original entry was wrong, which in cases like tis. it wasn´t.

Wendy is right.

It seems that Ancestry actually encourage their subscribers to add additional info such as maiden name to assist with searching.

I don't think that adding a maiden name is meant as a correction to the census but as extra information to help.

Of course I always look for a marriage to check it's the right one but if there are a many marriages to check it helps to cut them down. I have recently been looking for my 3rd great Aunt and cannot find a marriage for her but she turned up on 2 census luckley with her father and with a husband George Peet but one census has her father a Bentley and one as Varney, Varney being the right name, so having Varney added to the census with the Bentley name would help in searching for her.

And still cannot find a marriage for Harriett Varney or Bentley to George Peet.

The problem is that the information is supposed to be a transcription of what is on the census form.

If someone adds a correction that is not amending an obvious mistranscription, then it should be backed up by supporting references rather than just having the "incorrect in image" box ticked.

Adding a maiden name may be useful but only if it is submitted with the GRO reference of the marriage or similar information. Otherwise it is of little value.

Edit: added a not the absence of which contradicted what I meant. :-|

wisechild
I'm with you on this.

On a census, I expect a woman to be named reflecting her status at that time. I would not expect, or want to see this corrected to her maiden name.

Maiden names should be used when logging a person into eg. GR searches.
I have found it frustrating at times when I've contacted people on here who have a person with unusual surname in an area where I too have that surname.
To get a reply, "Oh I don't know anything about them, they just married in" is so annoying...
Well then, I wish they would please log them with their correct birth name.

Gwyn

Each to their own I suppose. Personally, when I find a person on the census, I prefer to look for the marriage before I add the maiden name, having been led up the garden path on more than one occassion

Hi,

For me having the maiden name at the top of the transcript as well as married name helps in researching her if you don't know her married name and doesn't really interfer for me with the actual census.