I have an ancestor whose marriage certificate shows her name as Katherine (Smith - just to make life difficult) Her birth certificate shows that she was registered as Catherine. A birth search on Katherine does not find her; you have to enter Catherine. With alternative spellings of Catharine/Catherine/Katherine etc. this makes searching difficult. There are many other alternative names such as Philip/Phillip or Sidney/Sydney. Is it too difficult to add alternative spellings of forenames as an option to the search menu, in addition to 'Phonetic search surnames'. The fact that it is not there suggests that it would place a large load on the search engine. Peter Beaven

On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 21:33:52 +0100, you wrote: >I have an ancestor whose marriage certificate shows her name as >Katherine (Smith - just to make life difficult) > >Her birth certificate shows that she was registered as Catherine. > >A birth search on Katherine does not find her; you have to enter >Catherine. With alternative spellings of Catharine/Catherine/Katherine >etc. this makes searching difficult. There are many other alternative >names such as Philip/Phillip or Sidney/Sydney. > >Is it too difficult to add alternative spellings of forenames as an >option to the search menu, in addition to 'Phonetic search surnames'. >The fact that it is not there suggests that it would place a large load >on the search engine. Not so much that it would put a huge load on the search engine, as that we don't have a robust design for doing the required name mapping. It isn't something that you can do with soundex (Soundex wouldn't help find my gggmother Catherine Grime, who sometimes appears as Kitty) -- Dave Mayall