Using the de Villiers/South African Genealogical numbering system.

Will do

Thans Daan! Also - while you are about it could we add the birth surnames for men where they are missing?

forgive my ignorance but why exactly is this system necessary? every other country gets along fine without a numbering system, what makes the south african tree confusing without a system? repetitive names?

The repeated names are a big confusion, but essentially all the published genealogical tables use them and it is a way of placing someone in the right line of decent. There will be MANY people with the same name because of the naming patterns. So the head of the families name will be carried down to his grandsons and so on - the naming patterns are explained in the http://www.geni.com/projects/South-African-Genealogical-Reference-C...

Jason for the reason as mentioned before but I will mention it again.
It is called the de Villiers naming confention.
1. Charles Petrus Marais (b1c9) married Anna Susanna Rossouw.(b4c9)
2. his cousin with the same names but being b2c5 married to Anna's cousin (b8c3) but they are not the same persons.
Now they get mergeed and we have 4 parents:
1. Arnoldus Marais(b1) X(married X) to Anna Susanna Rossouw (b8)
2. Charles Pieter Marais (b1) X to Johanna Rossouw (b4)

Not everybody knows who the ccorrect parents are and decides to merge the wrong ones and all havoc breaks loose.
Unfortanely whe have that name\ing conventions even still today.

I think I saw George Homms also mentioning that in the Netherlands and even French naming ways.

Thanks June for explaining this and starting the discussion.

And with me being so busy with other things, thanks for the mentioning of mens missing surnames. I also would like to have all the men with maiden names taken out - remember it happened years ago when Gedcoms were put in.

Thanks June. Have seen both.

Love Juds

When looking at the tree one way of knowing that the numbers are in the wrong place is to see if there is a comma between the surname and the numbers. If there is it is in the suffix field, if not it is in one of the name fields and needs fixing.

Judi I hope you mean that the married names need to be added where missing!!! ?? "I also would like to have all the men with maiden names taken out"

Jip June.

So we agree? - just to make it clear to all -

1. That all numbering needs to be moved to the Suffix field

2. Men need to have their birth surnames added where they are missing

3. Display names are not needed unless a Prefix is required - Dr. Sir. Rev. etc.

Good guidelines, thanks J&J.

June,
Have read the message, will implement and spread the word.

Regards,
Hobbie

Agreed..

Hi June,

Will spread the word and fix where needed.

And, please, small letters for the numbering system, not capital letters.

Wiil do
Thanks

Great team work - agree with Jansi - lower case in the numbering!
what thoughts do you all have about using only the tail end of the numbers after a certain number of generations? I see quite a few cases where only the last numbers are added to a profile - e.g. e6 without all the supporting numbers?

I used this approach for a while (e.g. d4e6), but found that it did not always give the clarity I thought it would give. Have switched back to using the full pedigree even if it is more work. No regrets.

Thanks all. Dankie Hobbie. I also use the small(lower) case.

Did quite a lot yesterday.

I also saw quite a lot of those j3 etc with nothing before it. Where I could follow the lead I added but itis not always possible.

I'm fairly new to this system, but can definitely see the benefit of it, so will implement it in the records of my immediate family.

Just one question, though. I see that in some cases, the numbering begins with SV and then goes on from there (e.g. SV1b3c4). Is this the correct convention, or should one start with the b generation?

Also, I presume this numbering system relates to the Afrikaans/Huguenot lines and not to other lines of descent. Is that correct?

Finally, is this numbering system used exclusively for the paternal line? If not, how does one number oneself given that there's different information in the paternal and maternal lines?

Hi Lee

The numbers relate to the male lines. Where there is SV1 or SV2 it means that there was more than one Progenitor. - if there was just the one then the SV is left off.

It is argued that this is just relevant to the Dutch/French/German lines, but I don't think this is true. The published genealogies have tables for SA progenitors from all over the world - so I use it for any Prog I have on the SA tree. I don't see it as restricted to only the Afrikaner races. Flicking through the SAG volumes confirms that.

If you look at other ways of numbering genealogival tables you will see that they can be very complicated and difficult to follow. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_numbering_systems

The de Villiers/Pama System is there - and there are more webpages that you can explore - I find it the easiest to use and follow. If you look at the tables I have added to my web page you will see that I have used it to write tables of all my lines.

A woman's maternal line stops with her - her descendants join her husband's numbering. I am not going to even begin to discuss what happens where woman don't marry or take on a married name!!

Thanks so much for all of this info. June - as always, it's *so* helpful!

With regard to numbering lines other than the Dutch and German lines, I've used the suffix PROG on my father's side of the tree (Scottish/Irish), but I haven't numbered the descendants. Still, as you say, there's no reason not to.

How would I number myself, though, with two different sets of numbers coming in from the two sides? Would I have to adopt only the paternal numbering? I must say, as a feminist, I feel rather :(( about that!

I would say that you "officially" have your father's - and for your mother's line you could use hers with the next generation in (..)?? A compromise?

Hmnnnn ... I need to ponder this. What a pity there's no way in the de Villiers system to indicate both maternal and paternal descent ...

A suggestion by the International curators has been that it belongs in the About Me or a Curator Note - as it is an entirely local and self referential system ito the patriarchal descent of SA male settlers in the Cape Colony in the 1800s, and they find it confusing that it should appear in the Naming Fields of a world tree at all.

Typo: 1600s

Are you suggesting that we now have to remove these number from all suffix fields as well Sharon?

If you flick through the SAG/SAF and other published genealogical tables these you will find that this numbering system is used in family trees across the spectrum of SA progenitors and not isolated to pre 1800 settlers. I cannot see how we can request that they are removed from the suffix field to the About section - the task is just too big.

I'm not espousing deleting June. I'm letting the SA users know that the numbering system isn't universally endorsed by everyone; and that the reason we started this discussion is because of objections by international curators.