From WeRelate
Frequently asked questions
What is a name page?
- A name page is a WeRelate wiki page that contains information about a first/given name or a last/surname
- Abraham Lincoln
- Abraham is the "First" or "Given name"
- Lincoln is the "Last" or "Surname"
- The name page is contained in the Name Wiki at WeRelate
- The Name wiki contains over 15,000 first or given names, and 100,000 last or surnames
- Each of those names has a name page
- If you are researching a name that does not appear in the name wiki, please add it, by creating a name page. See Create a new page below for more information.
What are the features of a name page?
- Find possible alternate spellings for family names
- Control how names are searched
- Find links to shared research pages involving family names
- Use a name page's talk page as a forum for discussing name-related issues
How is a name page used in searching?
Alternate spellings can be added to a name page.
- If you search for a surname that has a surname page, the search engine includes the variants listed on the page. The 100K most-common surnames have pages created for them.
- If you search for a surname that does not have a surname but appears as a related name on other surname pages, the search engine includes the primary names (names in the titles) of the pages on which it appears.
- Names are case and space-insensitive. As an example: Leblanc, LeBlanc, Le Blanc, and le Blanc are all the same to the search engine. It is not necessary to list all of these variations.
- "Rare" surnames that do not appear in any of the surname pages are picked up in searches by soundex (double-metaphone actually, which is similar to soundex). So alternates can show up in searches even if the name does not appear on a name page.
How do I find a name page?
Conventional Search
- Click on Search in the blue bar at the top of the screen
- Select Surnames or Given Names from the menu list
- In the "Surnames" or "Given Names" field, type the name you are looking for
- Click "Search"
- Your search results will be shown with the name you entered at the top in most cases
- Try different spellings if your entry did not return the results you desire
Browse Searching
- Click on My Relate in the blue bar at the top of the screen and select "Browse Pages"
- On the next page, select either "Watched Pages" or "All Pages"
- Watched Pages are those you are watching and will be informed if there is a change
- All Pages are all the pages on WeRelate
- Select a Namespace - either "Surname" or "Given Name"
- If, so far, you have selected "All Pages" and, "Surname" or "Given Name", you will see a list of all the names beginning with the letter "A"
- Enter the name you are looking for in the Title box and click "Go"
- This will result in a page listing the various name pages that relate to the name you entered
- For Example: I entered "All Pages", Namespace: "Surname", and "Foulke" into the Title box - The result: Foulke Surname Page
- For example: I entered "All Pages", Namespace: "Given Name", and "Walter" in the Title box - the result: Walter Name Page
More Search Information
How do I create a new name page?
- Click on the Add link in the blue bar at the top of the screen
- Select Surname or Given Name
- Enter the name for which you are creating the page, and click the Add page button.
- For Example: if I wanted to create a page for the surname "Quass"
- I would enter Quass in the Title box and click the Add page button
- The system will automatically index your new page in the appropriate namespace ("Surname" or "Givenname")
How do I edit a name page?
- To edit a name page, find the page you want to edit and click on the Edit link near the top of the screen under the blue bar.
When will my changes start showing up in searches?
- Your changes take effect immediately
- The changes will begin showing up in searches the following day
- Pages are indexed every night - so, if you created a new page, made changes to an existing page, or added new words to an existing page - the results will start showing up in searches the following day
How do I tell what changes someone else has made to the page?
- Click on the History link under the blue bar near the top of the screen
- This displays a list of all changes made to the page
- For each change - you can see how the page appeared after the change was made, the date of the change, and who made the change
- To see exactly what was changed, click on the two versions of the page you want to compare, followed by Compare selected versions
What if I want to leave a comment, but don't want to edit the page itself?
- You can leave comments about any page on its talk page
- Just click on the Talk link under the blue bar at the top of the screen, then click on Add topic.
General information
Adding or correcting Related Names
- Related names can include nicknames, name variations, and possible misspellings of the name
- Related Names are used to expand searches for related given and surnames
- Note: Changes that you make to the list of related names will start affecting how searches are expanded the following day
- When entering related names, enter one name per line
- The format of each line should be:
- name|source
- name is the related name
- source is where you found, or how you know, that the name is related
- The source for most related names is currently WeRelate - similar spelling, which means that our similar-name algorithm determined that the names were similarly spelled. The algorithm isn't perfect however, so feel free to remove related names that don't make sense
- Don't worry about alphabetizing the related names - that's done automatically
- It's a good idea to click on the Show preview button at the bottom of the page to see the effects of your changes
- Don't forget to click on Save page to save your changes when you're finished
Titles for name pages
Namespace
- Name pages belong to one of two namespaces
- Name pages for first or given names belong to the Givenname namespace
- Name pages for last, or surnames belong to the Surname namespace
Exact name
- After the namespace in a name page title, comes the exact and complete name
- There are often multiple name pages, whose titles either include or omit surname prefixes
Examples
Related pages
Source information
The related names were generated using a weighted edit-distance algorithm (better than Soundex for determining when two names are similar) for detecting probable misspellings, combined with information from name authorities such as:
