You are hereForums / Genealogy Research / Accurate Transcribing: was-gedcom files

Accurate Transcribing: was-gedcom files


By NathanJones - Posted on 05 July 2006

I've standardized all my spellings to conform to today's language.

At first I left the old names, they are quaint and add a certain flavor to my tree.

But my tree is too large and unwieldly for that now. Too many alternate names cause confusion and chaos.

Remember that Spanish has even changed alphabets (the Latin alphabet it utilizes today, the Arabic alphabet it used during the Moslem occupation of Iberia, and even the Hebrew alphabet)and still retained its integrity.

But you wouldn't retain a name in the original Arabic if you found a record of yours in that language.

The data has to remain accesible to the broadest possible audience. Most modern readers would not be familiar with old spellings. It would distract from the main thrust of our interest, in my opinion.