Yes, the Chapman Codes are extremely helpful, and i've used them for UK counties for a long time. However, within my own tree, and not for use in communication, i prefer the whole name of a country or my own abbr. at risk of going off-topic for this list, I'd never use the abbr's suggested by the Chapman Codes for UK's small islands except IOM & IOW. The are misleading to say the least. Lewis is in INV or ROC depending on the era but if you follow the Chapman code system it suggests that the above abbr is an acceptable substitutes for the island name because that is bhow their list works. It isn't. Lewis is/was part of INV/ROC, S. Uist is in INV &c. The Islands should never be listed using the code alone, always NAME + Co. CODE. anyway, yes the codes can be helpful. le durachd fionnghal ___________________________________________________________ Support the World Aids Awareness campaign this month with Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/
Hello Fionnghal, When I originally posted my family tree on "World Connect," I used Chapman Codes to identify countries and states/counties/provinces of origin. Later, when showing someone how this free site worked, I discovered, to my chagrin, that their search engine would not merge full or part name nor Chapman codes searches for any locale. Thus, you had to individually search each potential derivation of every location. I have made several suggestions to improve their searches, yet even today, you need to search all potential derivations of a location name. (ie Scotland, SCT, Midlothian, MLN, Linlithgow would require separate searches.) Took me a while, but subsequently I changed my database locations to the full names. I am also a Rootsweb list administrator for my BLANK surname. We archive all postings. Thus, I'm continually educating new list members on improving the search ability of their posting. Chapman Codes and dates in the subject line really helps differentiating which full postings to view . Nonetheless, all of life can be fun, especially when you make it so! Ron