Support for marked calling names

[dirk-qualisys]

I used a Windows software to create my family tree, and this one supports call names, i.e. mark the typically used first name when the person has more than one first name. It would be great to at least display call names from the gedcom file as underlined, and perhaps allow editing call names in a second step.

[Sternbach-Software]

What software did you use?

[michelesalvador]

Unfortunately the GEDCOM standard does not have a "call name" field in PERSONAL_NAME_PIECES.

@dirk-qualisys How does your Windows software export call names in a GEDCOM file? Perhaps with a custom tag? For example:

1 NAME Homer Jay /Simpson/
2 _CALLNAME Homer

[Sternbach-Software]

Nickname perhaps?

[dirk-qualisys]

Interesting - I was not aware that this is not a standard field. In the beginning I used a German software called Familienbande which produces ("Rufname" is the German term for call name)

1 NAME Mary Jane /Doe/
2 _RUFNAME Jane
2 SURN Doe
1 SEX F
1 BIRT
2 DATE 1 MAR 1959
2 PLAC Berlin

Now I use Gramps Version 5.1.5 which offers two GEDCOM exports, with (.ged2) or without (.ged) extensions - this is how they describe it, but the files are identical for me and none mentions any call name.

Thank you for looking into that - good learning for me!

[dirk-qualisys]

Nickname is different BTW and these software support both, call names (one of the official given names) and nick names (freely chosen, can be completely different). If you want to support call names, a configurable custom tag would be an option I guess, or an internal list of custom tags that FemilyGem knows and detects.

[michelesalvador]

I don't see an easy solution to mark call name.

Adding a custom tag such as NAME._RUFNAME or NAME._CALL has its drawbacks. The responsibility for managing tags (custom or not) lies with the gedcom5-java library, on which Family Gem is based. So the steps could be:

1. Do a search on which custom tag is most used by the main programs to represent call name.
2. Ask to FamilySearch if they are interested on adding this call name custom tag in the library.
3. If they are, make a pull request.

But my idea is that a custom tag is a bad thing, because it's generally not understood by other programs.

Another option I've seen around is to add an asterisk near the call name, e.g.:

1 NAME Homer* Jay /Simpson/

But this too it's clearly not GEDCOM standard.