Editing People
You always add a person as a relative of another, who is aleady in the database. (The Administrator can aslo add unlinked persons). There are several forms for adding people, trying to help you in the task by filling some fields (for example if you are adding a child, last name is aleady selected), but allowing you to change any information – you can also leave out any information that is not known.
The most basic information about a person is Name, Gender, and basic facts of life: Birth, Death (and possibly Marriage).
Contents
Names
Last Name is a relatively recent historical invention. Depending on the country, few hundred years ago people were known by their names (John) with possible addition of their professions Smith or a place where they lived (Anaximenes of Miletus). Later those nicknames were converted into the family names, which in some countries can be very complex. PGV gives you the tools to enter the names using the following fields:
- Name
- This is a display field, which will show the name as you enter data in other fields. By convention, the family name is enclosed in slashes „/” - this is how Gedcom recognizes the last name. You should try to make this name look like the usual way of writing the person's name, for example John D /Smith/, Gustav /von Aschenbach/, Arthur /Brown/ Jr, Dr. Anna /Clark/ etc.
- Prefix
- Name prefix, for example Mr, Dr, Sir, Don etc.
- Given Names
- One or more given names separated by spaces. If only initial is known, enter it here as well. You can indicate the preferred name with an asterisk after the name, e.g. John Arhur*; in display the preferred name will be underlined.
- Surname Prefix
- Prefix that comes before the surname, like in German or Dutch Von, van, van der etc. Some common prefixes are already spelled out for you , just click on the name: al, da, de, den, dem, der, di, du, el, la, van, von. The prefix will be displayed together with the surname like in Gustav /von Aschenbach/.
- Surname
- Surname or most commonly used surname (if there are several), or surname acquired at birth, if applicable.
- Suffix
- Part that come after surname; typical suffixes are also spelled out for your convenience, Jr, Sr, I, II, III, IV, MD, PhD, but you can add your own.
- Nickname
- Many people are commonly known by their nickname rather than first name; a nickname is usually acquired later in life, and is not part of formal name.
- Married Name
- Like Name it is an display field showing a complete Married Name
- Married Surname
- Typically after marriage wife's or husband's names change. You can enter here the name of a person as known after marriage. In searching for (or listing) people, the person can now be located both by her/his Surname and Married Name, which makes it easier to find him/her (and also causes double listing).
If you use non-Latin alphabets such as Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic or Arabic, and the administrator enabled additional tags, you will also see fields like Romanized, Phonetic, Hebraic etc., allowing you to store different versions of the name in several alphabets.
Multiple names
It is possible to add additional names to the person record. The preferred name should be listed first, and it is useful to add a note explaining the circumstances of changing the name. It is also possible to enter multiple Married Names (see Married Name above)
Editing / Deleting Names
The Options for individual menu allows one to edit any aspect of individual name. It is also possible to delete a name. When you delete the name, you do not delete the individual, he still exists with all the family link – his/her name will be listed as unknown.
Gender
Select the person's gender or leave as unknown. Gender will be filled for you if you add a wife, husband etc, but you must remember to select the gender of a child. There is also a shortcut in adding a child, little icons [♂][♀] allow you to immediately add a boy or a girl. Gender can be later edited using the Options for individual menu item.
Birth – Marriage – Death
When adding a person, you have an option to immediately add his or her Birth date and place, Death date and place and , if you are adding wife or husband, Marriage place place and date. Make sure that you follow the rules for entering Dates and Place data. You can also add the Birth, Death and Marriage events later.
Quick Update form
The Quick Update form in the Options for individual menu allows you to quickly add, edit or delete multiple events and facts about a person. It is useful if you need to make a large number of changes. Please note, that the current version does not add nor edit the Residence fact, only an untimed Address record.
Merging records
Sometimes the same person appears twice in the database. This can happen if you used two Gedcom files, when a person was added twice in his/her two different roles in the family, etc. PGV has a tool to merge both records into one, allowing you to select the facts and events that are relevant from either of the records. The tool requires Admin privileges and is available in the Admnistrator menu.
