Best practice for recording Americanized names?

[garybakker]

I have numerous Dutch ancestors who Americanized their first names at some point after they immigrated. For example, Roelof became Ralph; Jan became John; Joldert became Joseph; etc.

The Americanized name isn't really a nickname. My gut feeling is to record their birthname as their first name in the database, but I want to make sure I also record the name their descendants knew them as. My Internet research has given very little consistent guidance, and it seems that using parentheses or quotes are reserved for other standardized purposes.

Should I record them with brackets maybe? Like Roelof [Ralph].  Or should it be Ralph [Roelof]?

I don't know what the best practice is for genealogical purposes. Advice would be appreciated.

Gary

[stores]

I personally use both the "Nickname" and the "Also Known As" fields. I enter the name at birth, if known, in the tree as the primary name, then I use Nickname for any nicknames and the "Also Known As" field for Adopted or Americanized or other variants.

Then for females, I enter full name with connected surnames as the first line in her notes, ie "Mary Jane (Jones) [Lee] [Green] [ ? ] Redd", showing her maiden and subsequent marriages, with a question mark for marriages I know of but have not figured out who that marriage was to.

[garybakker]

Thanks! Perhaps there is no formal standardized best practice.

One advantage with using brackets or parentheses appended to the Name field is that it would appear on the various charts, where the Nickname field does not.

Gary

[Chris Lloyd]

In my experience the 'best practice' is what suits you and your 'market'. There are so many cultural and ethnic variations on how things 'should' be done that you need to decide what is best for you.

[garybakker]

1 hour ago, Chris Lloyd said:

In my experience the 'best practice' is what suits you and your 'market'. There are so many cultural and ethnic variations on how things 'should' be done that you need to decide what is best for you.

Thanks. That helps too. I just didn't want to choose a methodology and then at some point in the future have someone say "you dummy, that's not how it's done!".

Gary

[jayat1familytree]

Gary, What you are referring to is what would be known as a persons "called" name.

It is my understanding while there is no rule for this, the most common practice is to Capitalize the portion which is the called name, and in the case of 'Americanized' I add those in the quotes.

Gerhard Jan "JOHN" vandeHei

Herman ALBERT Verstegen

Johanna Maria "MARY" Penterman

Hope that helps,

Jay

http://www.genealogy.com/articles/research/35_donna.html

[garybakker]

1 minute ago, jayat1familytree said:

Gary, What you are referring to is what would be known as a persons "called" name.

It is my understanding while there is no rule for this, the most common practice is to Capitalize the portion which is the called name, and in the case of 'Americanized' I add those in the quotes.

Interesting. I hadn't considered that option (to indicated a "called" name in all caps). Maybe I'll try that and see how it looks. I don't use all caps for last names like some people do, so there won't be that confusion/conflict at least.

Thanks Jay!