namesake

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In a GeneWeb base, a person is uniquely identified through its first-name, its last-name and an occurence number which guarantees uniqueness in case of homonyms.

This set, called the index of this person, may be replaced by a more compact unique (but non stable) numerical value. Its explicit form is used for:

• Update forms ;
• Search of a person : first-name.occurence last-name ;
• wikitext#Internal links : [[first-name/last-name/occurence/displayed text]] ;
• Reference to photos (portraits) : first-name.occurence.last-name.jpg.

Note that except in the data capture situation, GeneWeb ignores accented characters. This forces you to choose a different occurence number for two individuals whose names differ only through an accented letter. GeneWeb assumes that European ISO-8859-1 coding is used. Using another coding should not trigger an error but yields strange results.

There is no constraint when choosing the occurence number for a new homonym. This number is not displayed on the personal data result page, but is visible in the URL window of your browser (and on some templates). If there are no homonyms, "0" is assumed and there is no need to enter it.

This occurence number is totally disconnected from the first-name number found in Louis IVX for instance, but it can be helpful to choose the same number.

When importing from GENCOM files, the occurence assignment is done automatically.

When merging multiple files, a gwc command (see Merging bases) allows some control by offsetting automatically potentially conflicting numbers (assumes that two identical persons from two different source files should not considered to be the same. Possible merge should happen later under your control). A second possibility is to ask gwc to shift all numbers of a source file by some value.

GeneWeb produces on occasion error messages describing two possible situations:

• Person already exists at person creation time. You either should link to that person rather than create it, or select a new occurence number.
• Unknown person, situation that may happen if you want to "link" to an existing person but omit or incorrectly specify the occurence number.

Be careful when entering occurence numbers as you could link to ormerge with the wrong person. GeneWeb cannot detect these errors!!