AKA: or NAME-CONFLICT:

I'm working on a project to extract Nicknames from the Note fields in my Conger genealogy file. The goal is to add the Nicknames to the Nickname field that is defined by RootsMagic.  It's a slow process. When I was using Personal Ancestral File (PAF) I used the "data tag" AKA: in the Note field when I wanted to record a Nickname.  Using the search command of RootsMagic it's easy to find the Notes with the AKA: data tag.

I've discovered that I often used the AKA: data tag for information that was really pointing out a name conflict rather than an "also known as" name.

Much of the information in my Conger file came from the impressive two-volume work of Maxine -(Crowell) Leonard, The Conger Family of America.  I have probably written that, "Mrs. Leonard was consistently inconsistent in how she spelled people's names."  There is no guarantee that a name found in Volume Two is more accurate than the name found in Volume One.  I say this because sometimes she used two different spellings in Volume Two. Other researchers such as, Charles G.B. Conger, recorded spelling different from Mrs. Leonard.

As part of the project to extract the Nicknames I decided I would change the AKA: data tag in the Notes to use two other data tags, in combination, that I used in my PAF file, NAME-CONFLICT: when I'm recording that I noticed a "name" conflict between what various researchers reported, rather than a Nickname.

Dick Henthorn
6 September 2014