TOPIC:

There appears to be a bug in the married family surname field.

In cultures where a family name differs between male and female variants, the individual users can be marked with their appropriate variations in their name field.
The surname field can then have a general/gender neutral name, and they're grouped together using that. This works.
Eg
Bob /Fraser/
surname Frasers
Beck /Fraserina/
sunrame Frasers

This works. Then when viewing the individuals in the individual list for example, it will have

---

Fraser
Fraserina

---

So the system understands that the names are grouped.

When an individual gets married, I would like to be able to do the same thing.
Set the married name to be their actual name, and the family surname to the gender neutral variation of the new family.
However, there is an issue: It doesn't save properly
If there is a difference between the surname in the married name field between the slashed "Jane /Doe/", and the married surname "Does" it, it will save the married surname field as "Doe" overwriting "Does" or whatever else is entered there.

There are two ways to record married names.

1) create a second name record, with type "married". This is the GEDCOM standard, and allows you to use base/inflected forms of the surname.

2) use the "married name" sub-field of an existing name record. This is a custom field, used by several (old) desktop applications. This subfield (i.e. an attribute of the main name) doesn't allow the base/inflected structure. This is because the desktop applications only supported a single name record. Other names (change, adopted, married, aka, etc.) could only be stored under the main name.

You need to use method (1).

The long term plan is switch from (2) to (1) as the default way to enter names.

See also github.com/fisharebest/webtrees/issues/794

Could you please elaborate on method one?
So when there is a married person, I need to create a whole second profile for that person, and somehow link them to the first person?
Seems like double handling/creating almost twice as many records, and how would I then link the two, so they don't come up as two separate people?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

No need to create a new individual. Just add an additional NAME to your current individual.

Under the “Edit” button for the individual you should See “Add a name”.

Ok,

So what would then be the difference between "maiden name" and "birth name"?

Maiden name is name prior to marriage.

Mostly, this will be the same as the birth name.
But not always. Maybe the individual changed their name or was adopted?

fisharebest wrote: Maiden name is name prior to marriage.
Mostly, this will be the same as the birth name.

In the Netherlands, a number of years ago a law was passed that stated husbands can use their wives surname the same ways as wives can use their husbands surname. Since then the term 'Meisjesnaam' (Maiden name) is slowly being phased out in favour of 'Geboortenaam' (Birth name), as men don't think of themselves as 'Maidens' ;-)