If the name fits

There are many different ways in which our given names are decided. Some prospective parents spend months poring over books and magazine articles devoted to anthroponomy. Others wait for inspiration to strike after the birth: "As soon as I held her for the first time, I just knew she was a Marie".

The decision-making method of most interest to family historians is the practice of following a traditional naming pattern: "This is my fourth son, so he is named for my eldest brother". If you are researching a family who adopt this method and an expected name is "missing" from your search results, then you have a good idea of whom you are looking for.

The best known of these patterns are found in thousands of families within a particular culture now spread across the globe. Sometimes you may detect a pattern with limited applicability that proves equally useful in guiding your research.

Arthur Chandler, gamekeeper of Beckenham in Kent, and his wife Jane Taylor had a large family (at least by modern standards). Some online trees listed as many as 12 children for the couple. I was able to account for five of them in the civil registrations of birth and they were confirmed by the details of the 1851 Census. Pre-1837 baptismal records added four more documented children.

As I contemplated the list of known children and those yet to be found, a pattern in the names suddenly became glaringly apparent. Arthur and Jane had named their children Arthur, Asenath, Alfred, Andrew, Amelia, Antoinette, Amy, Angelina and Alice.

Might this explain my inability to find evidence for their purported siblings Joseph, Caroline and Bob?

It was a straight-forward task to establish that the births supposed to have occurred in 1851 (Caroline) and 1853 (Bob) did not involve Jane Chandler (or take place anywhere in England, for that matter). Perhaps these were added to the family by international "cuckoo" researchers dropping their ancestor into the nest of any UK family of the same name to establish their immigrant origins - a type of retrospective informal adoption?

The status of Joseph is more challenging. In the 1841 Census he is listed after Arthur and Janet with the surname "do", but without any indication of a family relationship (a feature not introduced until 1851). His stated age (15) would mean that he was born some years before the marriage of his putative "parents". Might he be an ex-nuptial child of Jane or a pre-nuptial child of the couple who was named by Jane's parents (and so missed receiving an A-name from Arthur)? On the other hand, Joseph might be a nephew or cousin of Arthur residing with them at the time of the census. I said that a naming pattern could guide your research not find all the answers!

In case you are wondering how the children felt about their names; Arthur junior had thirteen children (born in Surrey and then in New South Wales) and he named them Arthur, Amos, Alma, Andrew, Abraham ... you see the pattern. Young Alice (who came to Queensland) was a rebel with a not a single A-name among her five children despite (or perhaps, because of) the fact that their French father Gustave Collin also had the names Antoine and Alexandre.

What price free information?

The increasing availability of on-line resources has transformed the practice of family history. There are now thousands of people calling themselves genealogists who have never unwrapped a bundle in an archive or trudged hopefully through a graveyard.

A typical on-line service provides customers with instant access to a range of digitised official records and the opportunity to create and publish family trees. The happy intersection of those two modes of business enables them to sell information provided by one client to another when their "search" includes so-called user-generated content.

There is a certain authority attached to a BMD registration, a Census form, or even a passenger list; but how much trust can you place in what I publish online?

Well, not me, obviously. Everything I post is comprehensively researched and impeccably documented. But what about the contributions of mere mortals who are prone to error, to wishful thinking, or just plain fabrication.

These musing were prompted by a return to Mundia after an extended absence. Mundia is an arm of the Ancestry mega-corporation that aims to separate the two major aspects of the family history business model. It enables users to create trees from scratch or upload an existing GEDCOM file, but does not offer direct access to any official records.

Membership of Mundia is free (at least while it is "in beta") because each person who contributes anything to the site is providing stuff for Ancestry to sell through its subscription arms. I have no difficulties with that when the company is completely open about what it does. I do wonder, however, whether their ought to be some requirement for quality control.

Mundia employs the "wiggly green leaf" heavily advertised across Ancestry websites to indicate that its algorithms have identified some additional information about a person in your tree. In essence, the leaf says "Here are some assertions, made by someone you do not know, that have no citations or sources attached to them. Would you like to incorporate them into your file?"

At first glance, the hints may appear to be coming from multiple sources. The same information is being offered from several contributors. Then you realise that, if you accept the hint, your tree will be added to the list vouching for the authenticity of the claim.

So why do I refer to Mundia? Because used carefully, it can provide useful insights. I will not accept a date of birth or a place of burial just because it is offered. I will use that information to refine a search undertaken somewhere else that can turn up real evidence to support the assertion and justify adding it to my database.

But it can be so frustrating. I was reviewing what (little) I know about 3xgreat grandmother Margaret HEATHWOOD (died 1887 aged approximately 49). A search using just that on Mundia identified five potential matches, Four, named Atwood, died in the United States; so the site was working beautifully so far.

Then came the shock.

And even worse, I knew that I had contributed to that mess because I uploaded a fragment of GEDCOM when I was first testing how the site worked.

Of the 19 versions of Margaret's life, 11 assert that she was born in Queensland and 6 that she was born in Co Armagh, Ireland. A seventh site argues for Ireland but apparently confuses Armagh and Fermanagh into Armanagh. And the nineteenth? Well when I uploaded, I could not confirm place of birth (and still cannot) so left it blank.

I understand the reason for the two camps. Margaret's death registration is annotated "** born Queensland aged 49 years" but there is no corresponding birth entry. On the other hand, there is inconclusive evidence of Heathwoods travelling from Armagh to Moreton Bay.

How many of the contributors to Mundia care about, or are even aware of, that uncertainty? And how can I identify those who do, so that I can apply appropriate weight to the value of their work? One way will be to wade through 18 published trees and assess their reliability in other areas.

In the meantime, I simply need to rely upon caveat emptor; which I believe is Latin for "if an aegean offers you an animal without charge, then have a good equine dentist handy".