Catherine Tabourdeaux - Removing "SV/PROG" and "SM/PROG" from the suffix field name.

These "titles" have been used on GENi profiles of SA Progenitors since the SA tree was first added way back in 2007. They should stay in place until a clear instruction from management is made to the contrary. Mike Stangel

What purpose do they serve?

I think quite an unfair request. The S/V Prog is the head of the South-African family, not a France family. The Stamvaders desendents are born in South-Africa. Why should this stand in his way. We want to know who our Stamvaders are. And another thing, we are not in "those time" anymore. We are in 2016. Leave us S/V PROG's alone!!! I fact the outlanders should be blocked from South-African profiles. How many times I saw English people from America, or portuquese people from Portugal changing my near Arikaans family or make the wrong merges to upset the applecart.

I totally agree with Jan de Klerk above. That is the naming convention in SA and they are my personal SV/PROG and SM/Prog. I have done years and years and thousands of Rands to do this rresearch and even go further into the Franch line.
So yes Mike Stangel I also say please leave our young countries Stamvader and Stammoeders to be at there rightful place. Jan de Klerk explains it correct. That is also why sometimes, like in de Villiers for example there are more than 1 Prog.
That is why we have the Settlars (1820 etc.) as a suffix as well. They started the line of family in South Africa.
Mario I hope you understand our feeling that the request is really unfair.
I can't explain myself to well in English as it is not my mother tongue, but Marais is my surname- born and bred.☺
Greeting.
Judi

This is the world tree and I dislike seeing these apartheid markers as I call them.

Not sure what is ment by apartheid in this context. These are mearly markers stating that they were the first "Settlers" of a family line in South Africa.

As there could be 6 brothers Marais who settled with their father, 5 would be my uncles where as 1 would be my gggggrandfather. In the projects I could therefore isolate the 6 brothers checking the path to find my grandfather as aposed to my great uncle. This makes finding a path a lot easier. What other option would be available were we could place a distinct marker so as not up set on anyones toes?

It would be nice to see on the rest of the world tree where others have relocated that they were the first of the family to have resettled in a perticular area, at a glance, showing that the area is therefore not their origin of birth.

Private User Apartheid started in 1948 in South Africa, 238 years after my (paternal) French Huguenot ancestors and 89 years after my (maternal) German ancestors arrived. Sorry to say but they had no part to play in the making of the Apartheid movement. You are touching on a very delicate subject that should not be discussed in an open forum as this.

I also find the "apartheid" comment unacceptable! The fact that you probably came from a long line of Scandinavian forebears and cannot really trace your lineage to a specific person does not mean that the descendants of the first people who went to Africa are not interested in where they came from. I think the fact that these descendants became a huge mix of all the people from Europe (and Africa) makes it all the more relevant to know who your "Stamvader/Stammoeder" was.

Mike Stangel:
SV/PROG = Stam Vader / Progenitor (father)
SM/PROG = Stam Moeder/ Progenitor (mother)

White South Africans can trace their ancestry to a bottleneck of European settlers in the 1700-1800s that is small enough that they can be identified as individual Progenitors. This is quite a unique situation, and the SA Progenitor projects try to acknowledge this by labeling them and collecting them altogether.

Bjorn's apartheid comment references the fact that the DeVilliers Pama Numbering System that uses the StamVaders as generation 'a' is a product of genealogy as it was done during the Apartheid years when mixed race marriages were made illegal, and the numerous Coloured children that had resulted from these StamVaders procreating with their slaves in between the legitimate children they had with their wives, were not counted as part of it.

The dilemma is in the SA failure to acknowledge that our SV/SM/Progenitors are descendants of the rest of the Europeans(French, British, Dutch, German, even Scandinavians) on the world tree, who find the sudden parochially minded labeling of them as Progenitors from 'a' in the middle of their descent lines, as a bit presumptive.
This is exacerbated by the fact that, especially our French Huguenot Progenitors, tend to come from the noble lines that produced the European and British royalty - so these are high traffic areas on the Geni world tree.

You may recall that an additional suffix field for the SA genealogy labels was mooted as a possible solution. This was met by objections that the SA labels shouldn't receive special treatment, and should be registered in the aka or in Curator Notes, so it was shelved.

I don't know what the solution is, but in the case of these two profiles it seems likely that the 60+ managers - of which a significant number (including myself) are their direct great grandchildren - might have the say about the naming.

However, that still doesn't solve the big picture problem of the hundreds of other SM/SV/Prog profiles that we get similar complaints about.
I don't have the solution :-) - just explaining the parameters of the problem, as you requested. :-)

Just to add that the location project/s Mario is attaching our French Huguenot settlers to: eg http://www.geni.com/projects/Isle-de-France-province-France/24575 - benefits us all enormously, and we do want him to continue to do it.

Agree with your comments, Sharon, but I do think it bears to be mentioned that these SM/SV/Prog profiles in South Africa are almost equivalents of the Mayflower settlers into the United States - a bottleneck of settlers parenting a huge offspring (who married later arrivals, etc.) Mention of 'apartheid' in this context is out of place.

The De Villiers/PAMA system was invented by Christoffel Coetzee de Villiers who used it in his published work Genealogies of Old Cape Families in the 1890s. Predating Apartheid by 50 or more years.
Granted, it is noted that Cor Pama refined the genealogical numbering system when he became one of the original members of the State Heraldry Council when it was founded in 1963.
However I don't think Pama did anything to the numbering system. Pama revised and republished the Genealogies of Old Cape Families book, using the same numbering. That edition was well known, and is referred to as "De Villiers-Pama"

SV/PROG = Stam Vader / Progenitor (father)
SM/PROG = Stam Moeder/ Progenitor (mother)

Dutch, German, Scandinavian

so
SAF/PROG=South African French Progenitor can be a new labeling?

It seems unnecessarily dishonest for us to deny that the peculiarly white StamVader genealogy of deVilliers and then Pama was used by the Apartheid intellectual community that developed 'Volkekunde' - South African anthropology based in eugenics - in their universities, and used it to develop a system of racial separation in their politics. (The 'Old Cape Families' were not the black families- even if there were far more of them!)
So Bjorn is not wrong when he points out that these StamVader genealogy labels are tainted by their use in Apartheid ideologies in a way that South African genealogy is still trying to break free from.

Whether or not South Africans feel this has anything to do with their right to use them in the suffix of their GEni profiles is another matter.

Johann Ahlers, I have brought up the analogy of the Mayflower and French Huguenot settlers in the USA with the American Curators before. They laughed loudly at the idea and told me I had no idea of the size of the numbers involved, and pointed out that they didn't label theirs in the suffix field. I was left with a mouth full of teeth, so to speak :-)

Martin: 'Vader' & 'Moeder' are in the South African Afrikaans language that derives from the Dutch. French is not one of our languages :-)

Sharon if this is the case, I was unaware. I am politicaly neutral, and merly trying to build a family tree. I do find the use of such helpfull, but if that is how people see it, I have obviously misunderstood the use of the term. So does that apply to the term "Settler" aswell?

Thank you everyone for your comments. I agree that identifying our progenitors is a deeply emotional endeavour in genealogy for everyone. After all, this is what makes genealogy so meaningful and personal. This is why we Love Geni!

We have had a similar situation in Québec (Canada) with the « Filles du Roy » (or "King's Daughters"). The « Filles du Roy » program was established by Louis XIV to entice young women to agree to immigrate in Nouvelle-France in the 1600s. The king would pay their dot. There has been nearly 800 women who came to Québec under that program. They have millions of descendants in North-America. Over the centuries, the « Filles du Roy » have gained a status of legend among French Canadians.

A few years ago, profile managers started to add "Fille du Roy" in the suffix field to identify this special kind of progenitor. The results was the name of the profile was like this:

Marguerite Abraham, Fille du Roy

It was indeed great for us (French Canadian) to visually identify our « Filles du Roy » everywhere: trees, relationship lines, projects, even in searches. The problem is that this tag was meaningless for most other Geni users. The tag was even confusing for Geni users who did not understand why the suffix field was used in this way. Ultimately, the rest of the Geni users were correct: this tag is not the generally accepted use of the suffix field in genealogy and it was causing issues among the wider Geni community. We, French Canadian, were misusing the tag.

Recently, we have been conducting a total cleanup effort to remove the tag from all « Filles du Roy » profiles. Now, we identify these special profiles in a way more in line with Geni conventions, as follows:

1. Add the profile to the Filles du Roy project
2. Use a special picture/icon
3. Enter a note in the About with a link to the project and the ship they came on
4. Add a curator note to tell that she was a Fille du Roy

For example, see:

Marguerite Abraham

http://www.geni.com/projects/Filles-du-roi/13635

Does a similar solution exist with South African progenitors?

Since someone mentioned "Mayflower," I could add that for project number 5 on Geni, we used the "display" name field to distinguish the passengers. In fact we do that with US Presidents and other titles .... Including nobility.

I don't understand why the display name field is not used?

Eileen Winifred Warren II, I don't think Settler is a genealogical term.
As you say, being able to identify the SA progenitor profile is very useful, so I can't see the South Africans - who manage these profiles - voting to do away with it.

Erica, I don't know if use of the Display Name field has ever been discussed. morel, would that solve your problem?

Erica, we put noble & other titles in the Suffix. though.

Re: Titles in suffix field

I don't & take them out on profiles I curate, move them to the display name.

English major here. A suffix in a name is reserved for particular and specific name elements only. Not for nicknames, bynames, toponyms, identifiers, aliases, titles, honorifics, etc. Etc.

I realize members work around the field limits in the database as best they can, but the display name combined with name fields and language module has solved my many - country origin issues.

Why don't we gradually move the SV/PROG or SM/PROG to the display name ahead of there being a solution from Mike Stangel? It still leaves MANY profiles with DVNs in the suffix field a problem but it is a move towards a compromise with the international GENi collaborators.

Re: Titles in the Suffix field: http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions#Titles_for_nobili...
"Normally we use the Suffix field for titles in the Medieval period and earlier, with the last name field generally used for the name indicating geographical origin."

Yes. I try very hard not to work before year 1000 A.D.

Side issue, isn't it?

There are literally millions of profiles in Geni using a disambiguating / identifying display name field with positive results for all.

I do hope the profile managers in this grouping find it a good solution also.

Yes, side issue, you're right.

About using the Display Name field:

1. The end result is the same: the profile's visible name contains narrow-scoped information, which defeats Geni's universal mission. For example, the name of:

Marguerite Abraham, Fille du Roy

looks the same, whether « Fille du Roy » is inserted in the suffix or the display field.

2. Geni does offer options to change one's preferences on how names are displayed. At first, it would seem that this is the solution: one could just set preferences so that names are shown as wanted. However, I tried every permutations of the name display preference options. At the end, this proved ineffective. I was getting some weird results. I had to revert back to display everything. This is because the name fields are not used the same consistently among all profiles. This was a deadend.

3. I would like to think that the Display Name field ought to be limited to information of near universal meaningfulness. For example:

Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta

Saint Francis Xavier, SJ

is commonly known as

Saint Francis Xavier, S.J. (English)

and we can use the Display Name field to show in other languages, like:

Saint François Xavier, SJ (French)

San Francisco Javier, S.J. (Spanish)

San Frantzisko Xabierkoa (Basque) ... etc.

4. Remember that (nearly) everyone sees the Display Name field. If we use the Display Name field for information only meaningful to a smaller subgroup of users (e.g. users interested in a region, a group, an evenement, a project etc.) then where is the limit? How big should the subgroup be so that it is OK to push the custom information on everyone else? When is the subgroup too small so that it is not OK anymore? For example:

Is "Saint Francis Xavier" really acceptable? (the "Saint" is meaningful to catholic users)

Is "Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State, Presidential Candidate" acceptable? (Who is interested to "former" positions in the profile name by the way? How many "former" positions is acceptable? Why not "former First Lady"? "Presidential Candidate" is not a title meaningful to genealogy, why is it there?)

We used to have "Marguerite Abraham, Fille du Roy". It was meaningful to French Canadians, but we decided to remove the tag and not impose it on the rest of the community.

Would "Joseph Morel, Pionnier du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean" be acceptable? It would be meaningful to the million inhabitants of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region.

https://www.geni.com/projects/Pionniers-du-Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean/...

Would "Hilda Ollikainen, victim of The Italian Hall Disaster" be acceptable? It would be meaningful to the family of those victims.

https://www.geni.com/projects/La-trag%25C3%25A9die-du-Italian-Hall-...

Would "Louis Hébert, first Pharmacist in Canada" be acceptable? It would be meaningful to those interested in the healtcare profession.

https://www.geni.com/projects/Famous-First/24998

Would "Johnny Morel, Pionnier de Saint-Henri-de-Taillon" be acceptable? It would be meaningful to the hundreds of residents of Saint-Henri-de-Taillon.

https://www.geni.com/projects/Saint-Henri-de-Taillon-Qu%C3%A9bec-Ca...

Would "Guillaume Morel, Ancestor-Immigrant of Mario Morel" be acceptable? It would be meaningful to me:

https://www.geni.com/projects/Mes-Pionniers-%25C3%2589dition-Mario-...

Where is the line?

After all, why use name fields for posting contextually-limited data? Why? Geni offers pictures, documents, events, "About", projects, and curator notes to post unlimited information about a profile. Why not use these resources? Why insist in stuffing "stuff" in name fields?

I'm just asking...

Never going to please everyone

Yes, I thought that would be your answer, morel.
"narrow-scoped information, which defeats Geni's universal mission" is a good point; and yes, the addition of titles the person themselves would not have used- such as Saint, especially when they are not universally used in modern times - even by other religions - always gives me itchy fingers :-)

But, how will you weigh the universality of Geni's mission against its other mission of crowd-sourced democracy that gives the profile's managers the right to decide?

More than that, if we don't use commonly known names, we risk duplication and bad tree.

And if there isn't a way to disambiguate "John Smith" in Geni, my "own" genealogy is trashed. And there is not in the current match technology.

Let's stay with the topic at hand: the specific request of removing a suffix from a common ancestor who was born and died in France.