The Main Tab for Individuals allows records details for a given Individual to be viewed or edited. For convenience, it allows details of the spouses and children of the current individual to be viewed or edited too.
When you enter a person's name that consists of more than one word, Family Historian will always assume that the last name is the surname, unless you explicitly indicate otherwise by using slash characters to mark the surname. Suppose, for example, that Elizabeth Powell Smith's surname is 'Powell Smith'. If you entered her name simply as "Elizabeth Powell Smith", Family Historian would assume that 'Smith' was the surname. To mark her surname correctly you would need to put slashes round 'Powell Smith' like this: "Elizabeth /Powell Smith/". If the name had been hyphenated however (as 'Powell-Smith') there would have been no need for slashes as Family Historian would have treated the hyphenated name 'Powell-Smith' as the last name, and hence the surname.
In some languages, the surname may not necessary appear at the end of the name. For example, "Mao Tse-Tung" should be entered as "/Mao/ Tse-Tung" because 'Mao' is the surname. If you only enter only one word as the name (e.g. 'Jane') Family Historian will, by default, assume that it is not the surname and will automatically add two slash characters on the end of the name to reflect this ("Jane //"). If actually 'Jane' was the surname, and that's the only name you had, you would need to enter it as "/Jane/" to make this clear. Of course, the alternative is to use a question mark or something similar, to mark the unknown name part - for example, "Jane ?" or "? Jane".
Why does Family Historian need to know which part of the name is the surname? It needs to know this so that it can provide a number of different services, such as automatic capitalization of surnames, surname-first ordering, search-by-surname, and much more.
When viewing names in Name fields, for editing purposes, Family Historian can, if you wish, always put slashes round the surname, to make it clear which part of the name is the surname. However, for aesthetic reasons, Family Historian by default keeps the use of slashes to a minimum, and only puts slashes round the surname when this is needed for clarity - that is, if the surname is not the last name, or if there is only one word in the name. See the Show Surnames Between Slashes option in Preferences: Property Box tab for options relating to this.
This tab can be customized using the Customize Property Box dialog.
There are 4 types of fields in this tab. These are Individual fields, Spouse fields, Marriage fields and Child fields.
| Individual fields |
These are the fields in rows at the top of the dialog. The field values displayed belong to the Individual whose record is being displayed (the current Individual). Click on the more text link, to the right of the Name field, to access the Names/Titles Dialog. |
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Below the Individual fields, there is one or more Spouse Tabs. There is one of these for each of the current individual's spouses, plus one extra blank one which is used to add more spouses. For example, a man who has been married twice will have 3 Spouse Tabs: the first two will show the given name of each of his spouses, and the third tab will be blank. There is no limit to the number of spouses you can add for each Individual.
| Spouse fields | These show details of the spouse (if any) corresponding to the current spouse tab (the current spouse). |
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| Marriage fields |
Below the Spouse files are Marriage fields. They display details of when and where the current Individual married the current Spouse (if they did marry). The Note field allows you to edit or view a note about this marriage. The Status field should normally be left blank. It is used to record non-default status information. You are encouraged to treat 2 individuals who never married as if they were a married couple if: (a) you wish to record the fact that, although they never married, they are or were a couple (b) they had one or more children together If you wish to record the fact that, although they never married, the ‘spouses’ were a couple, you should set Status to “Unmarried Couple”. Sometimes individuals have children without ever having a serious relationship as such. You should handle these cases using the catch-all “Never Married” value. Where a couple divorced and then remarried, or separated and then got back together, you can record these events in the Facts tab. But the Status field should be left blank (i.e. the default) in these cases as it represents the final or last-known status of the marriage or relationship. |
| Child fields | Each child that the current individual shares with the current
spouse, is listed in the Child fields. This area is scrollable; so
there is no limit to the number of children per marriage.
Click on any cell to edit the value in that cell. The 'Rel'
column displays the child's relationship to his or her parents
(e.g. adopted, birth, etc). Select the 'More Options'
command from the dropdown list if you want to specify the child's
relationship to each parent separately. |