Alan, Although not technically correct, I combine the prefix with the surname in order to prevent two surnames. De and Le are French-Norman prefixes meaning “of the,” therefore, and especially in the case of “De” these prefix’s sometimes denoted people that were landed wealthy aristocrats. Many such prefixes have been combined over the years, i.e., Devoe, Devane, etc. The prefix “Fitz” is also French-Norman originating from a Latin prefix, which means “son of.” A common surname that has been combined in FitzGerald. And there are many, many others . . . .
My suggestion is to do what is understandable and comfortable to you. It is your data. Charles From: Alan Pereira [mailto:alanpere...@tiscali.co.uk] Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 4:59 AM To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] 'de' in a family name I have seen some systems that work around that problem by having a second surname field which is used for sorting purposes (UK National Burial Index uses that process). I'm not sure that Legacy could accommodate that without a major rewrite. Alan Pereira From: Tim [mailto:t....@tesco.net] Sent: 08 August 2013 17:13 To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: [LegacyUG] 'de' in a family name Further to Jackie’s recent post on foreign names, it appears to me that le Clerke and de Dompere are full family surnames in their own right rather like van and von attached to Dutch surnames and should be listed under L and D respectively. My problem is when at some stage in medieval times, ‘de’ attached to a surname denoting place of origin of the family, is no longer used. For instance, I have numerous ‘de HATFIELD’ and ‘HATFIELD’ of the same family which appear under D and H in the name list, and which is confusing. I am thinking of changing ‘de HATFIELD’ to ‘HATFIELD, de’ so that they all appear under the letter H. Any views? Tim Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
