Question spouse versus partner

If you are on the page of a female person and select the tab "Families" then there is an option "Add a husband". In my opinion, this wording should be changed to "Add a partner".

It is not clear in this situation whether you like to add a married partner (husband) or a non-married partner; and even worse: maybe you like to add another woman to this female person, then "husband" is not correct.

Is webtrees following strictly the GEDCOM standard by listing this as only husband (HUSB) and wife (WIFE)? But I agree partner would be better suited in these instances but the limited and strict GEDCOM standard is perhaps preventing this, I'm only guessing here since I'm not a GEDCOM expert. Greg could possibly expand on this and better explain it.

It appears according to the standard a family is comprised of a husband, a wife and a child. The husband is a male and the wife is a female and that is very strict based on the reality of family combinations today.

Good point though Hermann.

GEDCOM 5.5.1 required that a family was one man and one woman.

webtrees ignores this, and allows same-sex families.

GEDCOM 7.0 also allows same-sex families.

> If you are on the page of a female person and select the tab "Families" then there is an option "Add a husband". In my opinion, this wording should be changed to "Add a partner".

The link is called "add a husband" (for women) or "add a wife" (for men) or "add a spouse" (if the sex is unknown).

The next page then allows you to add a married or unmarried individual, who may be male, female, unknown or other.

That's a lot of options...

We could change the link to "Add a husband/wife/spouse/male partner/female partner/unknown-sex partner".

Yes, it would be more correct/accurate. But it is too many words for a simple link or menu item.

Yes, "Add a husband/wife/spouse/male partner/female partner/unknown-sex partner" would be correct and is too long. I suggested “Add a partner”. That is short. And for me “partner” can be everything, a husband, wife, married, not-married, male, female, …

> And for me “partner” can be everything

Does this work for other languages?

Many require different words for male/female.

In others, the translation for "partner" might explicitly mean "unmarried partner".

> Does this work for other languages?

I can only speak for the Icelandic language and partner (or “maki” in Icelandic) works in all instances whether for husband, wife, married, not-married, male, female and same sex or unknown sex couples.

But this could be different in other languages as stated by Greg.

In Icelandic, husband translates to a married male (eiginmaður) and wife translates to a married female (eiginkona). So when creating a family in webtrees (or adding a husband or a wife) in Icelandic it translates to creating a married couple which are specifically male and female.

> Does this work for other languages?

I can only speak for the German language. In German "Partner" (the translation of "partner") is an umbrella term and can be used for husband, wife, married, not-married, male, female and same-sex or unknown sex couples. It is not necessary to add "male" or "female" to "Partner".

Also in norwegian pertner is neutral, and will cover all options (married or unmarried)
If married, I guess the closest term in English would be spose:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spouse

hermann wrote:

> Does this work for other languages?

I can only speak for the German language. In German "Partner" (the translation of "partner") is an umbrella term and can be used for husband, wife, married, not-married, male, female and same-sex or unknown sex couples. It is not necessary to add "male" or "female" to "Partner".

The same applies for Dutch.

I think they are two subjects in the topics: do not assume the marriage, and replace "add a husband/wife" by "add a partner" on one side, and the gender of the other partner, on the other side.

I do not have an issue with the first point of not assuming the marriage, and replace "husband/wife" by a more generic term.
In French, we would need to determine whether we settle on "concubin" or "partenaire" (the former is the current translation, but the latter is suggested as well, and may be a bit more modern). They would not be necessarily be used by married partners, but I feel this would still be fine to use them as the generic term in that context (it is gendered though, see below).

For the gender of the other partner, and the potential issue with languages, I am a bit more reserved.
In French, the translation would be different for male & female: "Add a (male) partner" would be " Ajouter un concubin/partenaire", and "Add a (female) partner" would be "Ajouter une concubine/partenaire", even though technically, in traditional French, the masculine form could be used as the generic term, or some could suggest an inclusive form, but either options are a controversial subject. As always, unknown sex is not something handled very well in French, and we could have to end up with "Ajouter un(e) concubin(e)/partenaire".

Independently of the language, there is a user experience point I would like to raise if we stick with a non-gendered single button : the large majority of my genealogy is not in recent times, so when I add a partner, 99 % of the time, this is an individual of the opposite sex (and I expect most genealogies are in that case). I would therefore prefer webtrees to remain opiniated on that front, and the opposite sex to be the default selected sex when adding a partner, and for the user to change explicitly for same-sex partners.

> In French, the translation would be different for male & female: "Ajouter un(e) concubin(e)"

This is the sort of "ugly" construction that I want to avoid.

For applications that are designed to work in only one language,

> when I add a partner, 99 % of the time, this is an individual of the opposite sex

And for historic data, I guess 99% are also married.

fisharebest wrote:

We could change the link to "Add a husband/wife/spouse/male partner/female partner/unknown-sex partner".

Yes, it would be more correct/accurate. But it is too many words for a simple link or menu item.

I would suggest "Add spouse/partner" to make it more clear. On the next page after selecting a person, you can additionally check if there is a same-sex relationship. If yes, a hint can be displayed for information.

> This is the sort of "ugly" construction that I want to avoid.

> For applications that are designed to work in only one language,

If I'm not mistaken then by changing only four lines in each language file (if applicable based on each country specific needs) then "Spouse/Partner" change can be accomplished without changing the webtrees core code, see the following lines (translation based on Icelandic (Spouse/Parter => maka):

In english this would translate to:

This would at least better address Icelandic custom/tradition when couples partnership is being established regardless of the couples gender or whether they are married or not. Regarding the gender it can then easily be changed in the next page of establishing couples partnership whether male, female or unknown.

This works, as far as I can see, for Icelandic.

+1 on "Add a partner".
Was adding a gay couple, and it was very unintuitive that I had to add a husband and then change the gender afterwards.

Would the UI be able to change "partner" to "husband/wife" if a marriage entry can be found?

Peter_S wrote:

fisharebest wrote:

We could change the link to "Add a husband/wife/spouse/male partner/female partner/unknown-sex partner".

Yes, it would be more correct/accurate. But it is too many words for a simple link or menu item.

I would suggest "Add spouse/partner" to make it more clear. On the next page after selecting a person, you can additionally check if there is a same-sex relationship. If yes, a hint can be displayed for information.

I agree. Then (maybe) put a help link next to it that explains in pop-up which tag it will use (HUSB/WIFE) and why and also explain that the user can still select any gender and whether or not married.

I have opposite question. I added wife to a person, but have 'partner' instead 'husband' and 'wife'. Old records show husbands and wives. 

What to do to make faceless 'partner' to traditional family "husband" and "wife"?

Also, I don't have 'marriage' in the dropdown for adding an event. How to make marriage instead of partnership?

Leo2 wrote:

I have opposite question. I added wife to a person, but have 'partner' instead 'husband' and 'wife'. Old records show husbands and wives. 

What to do to make faceless 'partner' to traditional family "husband" and "wife"?

Also, I don't have 'marriage' in the dropdown for adding an event. How to make marriage instead of partnership?

It sounds like you are looking on the Individual page for one of the people. Go to the "Family Navigator" on the right side of the page and click on heading "Family with ...." to go the page for this family. Notice that the drop-down menu for "Add a Fact" is completely different, and now includes things like "marriage", "divorce", "number of children", etc. instead of "birth", "death", "census", etc

Yes, thank you! It is that I was missing. I added marriage and now they are in 'traditional relationships' ))

Sometimes webtrees features are not easy to find.

I see here ( www.webtrees.net/index.php/forum/9-reque...ing-a-partner/unread .) that this discussion is being resurrected. 

So, before it gets pushed too hard in one direction I want to express my absolute desire to see the current terminology NOT changed.

As Greg very correctly pointed out earlier, this software is primarily to designed for recording historic events. For most users that means recording 99% of relationships as husband and wife. Therefore pre-selecting "Add wife" or "Add husband" is by far the most efficient solution,and makes sense to must users most of the time.

For interest only: in my own family tree I have 4,592 marriages recorded, of which less than 40 might have benefitted by seeing a link to "Add a partner" of any type. I have no doubt that "Add wife" of "Add husband" links have saved many many errors occurring due to recording the wrong gender. The same goes for "Add brother" or "Add sister" links.

I agree with Nigel, for his reasons, AND for another:

If I am on the page for a “Jane Doe", and the link says “add a wife,” that alerts me to the fact that I have not correctly set the gender for Jane. If Jane is going to marry another female, seeing “add a wife” doesn’t hurt anything—I can click it and change the gender.