Genealogy Chat

Middle names were, at one time, shown in the search facility on here.

So if you searched 'John Smith' you would get the list including any middle names but that facility was then withdrawn.

However if you searched 'John Smith' and then clicked on the contact name the middle names for 'John Smith' were shown in the message heading!

That facility was then withdrawn.

I can only assume, like Siobhan, it has something to do with Genes believing that by not including middle names it will help increase their revenue?!?!

Chris

Someone sent me a very nasty PM once because of that..Hes Wife & my Aunt had the

Same name, same where born & same birth year...the only difference was they had different middle names which he didn't check before i got the PM

Just in case you don't know, on FreeBMD, I can search for a 2nd or a middle name instead of the first name. So suppose I'm looking for Francis Xavier Smith, I can search for Xavier as a 2nd name using *Xavier, or if he might be called John Francis Xavier Smith, as **Xavier.

I agree.

The problem with putting both names in the given name box -- if someone has done that in their tree, I believe the name will come up in results only if both names are searched for.

If I put John James Smith in my tree as

John James
Smith

rather than

John
James
Smith

I think people searching for "John Smith" would not find him.

My preference would be fuzzy searches / wildcards. I hate having to search for someone five times by five different possible surname spellings. So much easier to search for Bern* instead of Bernard and Bernhardt and Bernhart, for instance ... and then doing it all over for Burnard, Bernhardt ...

Of course I'd also like to be able to search by given name only (which, if you have a location and date, can be helpful).

You can put both names in the Christian name box and see if that helps.

Christine

Does anyone else find it frustrating that you can't search trees on here using middle names and first name.

It would make it so much easier for some of my ancestors if I could see middle names.

Sounds bad I know, but I do wonder if they have done that deliberately to get people to pay for transcriptions as the only way to rule people out then is by contacting the member. Whereas if u could search by middle names, it might easily identify if anyone has yours in their tree without a subscription.

I buy a subscription anyway so it doesnt make any difference to me. But if my theory is the case perhaps they could make it a feature for paying members.