Name Changes (Legal or Otherwise)

[Danita]

I have two recent discoveries in my family where adult men totally changed their names.  One was an Italian Immigrant to Scotland, and he changed his name from Pietro Antonio Zanrè to Thomas Alexander.  The other was in the US in the 1800s, who got married, and then just changed his first and last name.  I also have two cousins who were not legally adopted by their step-fathers, but have never returned to their birth names.   I can simply not come up with a way to search for these people and find them if I am not looking for the right name.  If I go with their birth names (which is not my preference - I  tend to put folks in as who they "were" when they died, or are now if living), then if you search for Thomas Alexander, he doesn't show up.  If I go with the "final" name, then searching for the birth name from a birth record, for example, will not find him.  Is there an official/preferred way for TNG to address this?  Should I have two records and make a "link" somehow between them?  Thanks.

Danita

 

[theKiwi]

You could put them in twice, and use the "Same Person Link" Mod https://tng.lythgoes.net/wiki/index.php?title=Same_Person_Link to link them together

Or you could give them a "combined" name so in the First Name field

Pietro Antonio or Thomas

In the Last Name field

Zanrè or Alexander

That way someone searching for either of Pietro or Thomas will find the same record. This is what I have done in my database, although admittedly not for names as different as this example - but I have lots of last names that might be "Moffat or Moffet or Moffitt" so that people find them no matter which variant they used.

In the Notes field for the people you can leave a description explaining why their names are shown as such.

Roger