Maria Benedicta Jonasdtr Haugs (Haugs) - Lots of merges

What is your source for her birthdate of August 11th 1784 and her birthplace of Vadla? She is baptised September 11th 1784 in Tysnes according to the churchbook, no place of birth is mentioned since both parents are using familynames.

Noone is named Jonasdtr, ever. That is an abbreviation of Jonasdatter, and ofcource her patronym should be written -datter and not -dtr.

Why is her lastname written differently than her Lastname at birth? Shouldn't they be identical.

In norwegian profiles, where the person uses a familyname, the patronym is written in the Middle Name field.

On a norwegian profile the language of the names should be Norwegian and not English.

Hey, I just notice you share my niece's name: Remi. I'll answer your questions in order:
Much of my information comes from a document I received from someone who has information that was in records that were lost in a fire. Send me an email to brillig(at)gmail.com and I will forward it to you. I do need to double check everything I can.

Most of the information for this record, though, I think, is simply the result of a merge. The data did not start with me. I just merged and had to make a decision on whose data to keep.

Anyway, on to your questions.
First, the birthdate comes from this document:
http://www.arkivverket.no/URN:kb_read?idx_kildeid=11700&idx_id=... (second page - left column has the birth date, right column has the baptism date in the church year). It looks like I need to correct my records. Birth date should be 11 Sep, and baptism is 18 p. trinitas, 10 October. I'll try to get confirmation of that. Speaking of confirmation, I'll try to find a confirmation record, which frequently also repeats birth and baptism dates.

The place of birth comes from someone else's edit, but it conforms to information about the farm I received via email. It came as a result of questions I was asking about the history of the Qvalem farm in Tysnes. All records I could find for Qvalem/Kvalem seemed to point to Manger. But there also seemed to be clear indications that there was a farm by that name in Tysnes. Well, it turns out that is correct, and it was further divided into smaller farms, one of which was Vadla. We can discuss this more via email.

As to the name Jonasdtr, that is just the patronymic in a standardized format. I disagree that the name SHOULD be written Jonasdatter or Jonasdottir or Jonas datter. It CAN be written any of those ways, or Jonasdtr or Jonasd. all of which are found in the various documents. Spellings also were inconsistent, so, for example, you will find Marie and Maria, Benedicta, Benedicte, Benedikta, etc. None of my changes were intended to make one of these formats preferred over another. I simply had a bunch of duplicates from records created by about 5 different people, and I had to choose something. Feel free to change it to Jonasdatter if you like. That doesn't materially change anything.

About your question of last name, there were no last names. There was the patronymic, which I just discussed, and then there is the farm name. The farm name changed as a person moved. There were no surnames until the reform in the 1800s. I try to follow a pattern I've seen recommended by genealogists studying Norwegian genealogy and, for genealogical purposes, use the place name in the record associated with the earliest life event possible. That would be the birth record, if there is one. If there is more than one birth record, a decision has to be made which to use. In this case, it looks like it should be Haug or Haugs. I'm not seeing what you're referring to about her last name being different from her last name at birth.

Regarding placing the patronym in the middle name field, can you cite a reference that standardizes that? Who established that standard? It differs from a standard I've seen (but that was not made for geni).

What makes a Norwegian profile Norwegian? What is an example of a name that would differ between English and Norwegian?

Victor

P.S. I am relatively new to geni and am using a trial pro account while it lasts. I've got a ton of data that I've been manually entering since gedcom uploads are no longer allowed. More later - I need to go eat.

I found this document:
http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Patronymics
I will begin switching to this format for geni. I don't like this "standard" because it is inconsistent with itself, sometimes putting the patronymic in the middle name field and sometimes in the last name field. As a database programmer, I find that to be a really bad standard, but since it's a published standard, I'll go with it.

The standards in Geni are useful within Geni for searches and for merging purposes.

And they change from area to area, so in the borderlands and bordertimes, things get confusing.

What you can do with the various spellings of given names -- Marie or Maria, for instance -- is use the spelling that seems most usual in the first name field, and then put the other in the "nickname" field. That way, it will be available in searches.

As to the what is Norwegian and what isn't -- the pieces of my family that were born and died in Norway are pretty clearly, to me, Norwegian, as we speak of it. People who were born in Denmark and moved to Norway? I put all the names into the fields -- the names from the Danish conventions into the main fields, and the names they were known by ion Norway into the nickname fields.

Mostly these days I am working with the medieval Welsh, but the same issues arise. Various spellings, patronymic conventions, the use of nicknames at the time the person was alive (which then tend to look like surnames to current Geni users), and the intermarriages and movement in between Wales and England, or Wales and Scotland, or Wales and Ireland.

Many of our usages are still getting worked out; we can always discuss them in the public forums, so that we hear what our various minds think about them. They aren't set in stone.

But for me, the main issues are -- 1) I need for the Geni users to be able to fine the profiles that already exist. That's first. Then, 2) It would be great if every time I merged the medieval profiles I didn't have to resolve all the various data fields because the conventions weren't getting followed. (In the case of the Welsh, the words such as "ap" -- which means "son of" -- appear variously in the first name field, the middle name field, and the last name field, when they should properly be in the last name field, as part of the patronymic.)

Yep. It can be frustrating. We're working this out all together.

Oh, as to an example of a name that is different in Norwegian and English (and Danish) -- I give you one of the most well known: Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England, Norway

In this profile, you can see the use of not only the nickname field, but also the language tabs.

I just added some information to my source document on how to properly interpret it. I remembered after my last post that we had a long discussion about it on a Norwegian genealogy group. I also added an introduction date (actually just changed the previous entry that was a baptism date to an introduction date). We spent a good deal of time analyzing this parish record and discussing it, so I'm pretty confident the dates are correct now.

Introduction dates can be useful as a double check on birth dates, since the gap between them was fairly consistent (usually first Sunday following 40 days after the birthday). According to Leviticus, it should be twice as long for girls, but I don't think that was practiced in Norway.

Anyway, the introduction date is 18 p. Trinitatis, i.e., 10 Oct, so the birth date had to be at least 40 days earlier, in other words, before September.

Regarding Cnut, I don't see language tabs (BTW, he is my 24th great uncle), brother of my 24th great grandmother. :)

Make that 23rd great grandmother. Oops.

If you go to the Cnut profile, you can see under his name versions of the name in various languages.

If you click on "edit profile," you will see, over on the right-hand side of the edit display, "Add languages."

If you click on that, you will see the languages you can add to put in various versions of the name.

That is how the different language variations of the name got entered.

There is a lock - I cannot view the profile because it is locked. Or is there some trick?

Victor, it is good to see you are so meticulous.

The first date in the churchbook, in the left column, 11 Sep is not the birthdate but the baptism date. The date in the right column is the mothers date of introduction into the congregation after her giving birth and is approx. 6 weeks after the childs birth.. There is no date of birth mentioned. I have looked for her confirmation before I asked my questions, and it looks like the churchbook is for the time of her confirmation is missing.

And just to let you know. I am as close to a professional genealogist as you get in Norway. I have Norways only education in genealogy at college/university level and I have doing this for over 30 years starting when I was 18. So I know a whole lot about doing norwegian genealogy.

My point about Jonasdtr vs. Jonasdatter was that the person's name wasn't Jonasdtr it was Jonasdatter. That the priest and/or other writers chose to shorten it doesn't change the fact that her name was Jonasdatter. We try to write full names in the namefields in our genealogy, and the exact wording when we cite the source. We also try to use the names at birth and how the names are written in the baptismrecords as the persons names in norwegian genealogy. All other spellingvariants and other names later in life should be written in the AKA field on Geni, Also, women usually didn't change the names to the husband's after marrying.

You can read about how names of norwegian persons are written in Geni here: https://www.geni.com/projects/Norwegian-Ancestry-information/11383
At Maria Benedicta's baptism both both parents are using family surnames, and the way you can see that is that none of them has the farmname they are living on atfer their patronyms or firstnames. You can compare with the other baptisms on the same page. Father's name is Jonas Haugs and mother's is Giertrud Marie Mejer. Both Haugs and Mejer are family surnames in this instance.

The names of a person born in Norway should be written under the norwegian languagetab in the names-section. If the person then died in another country I would writhe the names used in the new country under that country's languagetabs.

Victor Stephen Engel -- I'm so sorry; I didn't realize that if the name fields were locked the languages were locked also.

Try it on a profile you manage -- over to the edit page, up at the top right of the edit screen, is the language tab.

@Remi, besides the extensive conversation about this on Facebook, here's why I don't believe that date on the left is the baptism date.

The baptisms usually happen at the church, unless access to a church is not possible due to the remoteness of the birth location from a church, which I don't think is the case here. In that case, the baptism happens at home with a subsequent ceremony in the church. Since they happen at the church, the entries in the register naturally fall in chronological order. So, to find the baptism date, we need to look for one that is in chronological order. That 11th date does not qualify. Additionally, baptisms are almost always on a Sunday or some other important feast day. The 11th doesn't qualify for this reason either. Baptism dates around this time were usually indicated with the dominical date, not a date in the Gregorian calendar.

I also did not find any confirmation information. I have been told some Tysnes registers were lost in a fire. Perhaps this is an example.

One other question I have is how Norwegian locations should be entered on geni. Most of the records I deal with are parish records, so it makes sense to have the farm name and parish hierarchy, but what goes in which field?

BTW, I am aware of the surname Meyer/Meier/Mejer used by this family. It seems to have originated in Germany. Interestingly, my father's side of my family tree (he's from Gera, Germany), also has Meyers in it, but so for they seem to be unrelated.

The name Qvalem also seems to be used as a surname or else there was a farm in Tysnes by that name. I have conflicting information that Qvalem was only in Manger and that it was also a farm in Tysnes. Certainly, if you look at all the records for people carrying the name, it seems apparent there must have been a farm Qvalem in Tysnes. So I'm inclined to believe the person who told me that there was, in fact, a farm by that name there, and that it was divided into several smaller farms, one of which, I think, was Vadla. I've never, however, seen any primary documents pointing one way or the other.

One reason I don't believe Qvalem was a surname is that you see Meyer and Qvalem used together, and Meyer was a surname. Did they have two surnames? That seems unlikely. Also unlikely is that everyone carrying the Qvalem name came from Qvalem in Manger. The times and geography just don't support that as being very likely (along with the absence of records in Manger).

I take back what I said previously about the 11th being out of order. I rechecked the dates, and it is, in fact, in order. I think I'll go back to the Facebook thread and bring up the discussion again. I'm no longer convinced that Aug 11 is right.

13 p. Trinitatis is 5 September.
14 p. Trinitatis is 12 September.

So 11 September is between those and is thus entered chronologically, if that is a September date.

I'll post another update after I've done more studying on this (also comparing other entries for patterns, e.g., the one for 14 August).

I agree with you that Qvalem is a surname and there are a lot of people living on Vadla in the 19th century using the surname Kvalem (which is the same name with a different spelling). Today the farm Vadla is written Valla.

The way locations are written is: Farmname/Parishname, Municipality, County, Country.

OK. But on geni, there are fields that don't correspond. I've seen people place the Norwegian county name in the state field for example. I've been placing it in the county field (seems to make sense to put county in county). Municipality would seem to match the city field. I've been putting farm and whatever levels of parish in the first field.

It isn't easy to make foreign ways of doing things into the american ways of doing things...... Or it isn't easy to make americans to understand how foreign states are doing things. And when dealing with 50 countries there 50 ways of doing things.

In general when doing norwegian genealogy: Place name is the farm or the parish, County is the same as the municipality (kommune), State should be used as Fylke, and Country speaks for it self.