Forum:Surname absence

Most European people in recent centuries have surnames, but not every such person mentioned on the wiki has a known surname - particularly married women.

In earlier centuries, surnames were often non-existent. Some people on Familypedia have been given "surnames" based on their dynasties, but it could be argued that names such as "Carolingian" are no more true surnames than "Georgian" or "Hanoverian". See some of them at Familypedia:Surname statistics.

Our standard form for person-page creation is designed to produce an error message if we try to create a page with no given name or no surname or no short name. There are good practical reasons for that.

However, people whose surname is unknown or non-existent deserve a place in the wiki. What should be our method of dealing with them? Should we enter nothing or a hyphen or "Unknown" in the Surname field?

-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:37, July 20, 2016 (UTC)