Once again...

Holland is a street in North Barbant:

http://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/ancestors-in-reusel-de-mierden-noord-b...

Sorry,
this is a stupidity.

the netherlands, Nederland, les pays-bas, de lage landen, Holland are
the names of our country.

Before we were also called "de 7 provincies",
7 counties: Holland, Brabant, Overijssel, Gelderland etc,

but only a street? Nonsense.

Did you follow the link? It is a serious article written by a professional Dutch genealogist about a real issue with internet family trees.

I will change profiles on Geni that have “Holland” as a location to “The Netherlands” when I come across them. A person from Holland is from the Netherlands but a person from the Netherlands is not necessarily from Holland.

It is like referring to Barack Obama as the President of America, everyone knows what you mean but that doesn’t make it a correct statement because there is no such country as “America”, likewise there has never been a country named “Holland”, I think that was the point RVK was trying to make.

The point of the article that I posted a link to is that early geographical software when it went looking for a location match for the word “Holland” could not find any country of that name and would instead make a match to “t’Holland” which is a street name in Brabant, as the article points out it is statistically impossible for a village the size of Reusel-de-Mierden to have had so large an impact on the world population. Since reading the article I have actually come across numerous old profiles on Geni with Reusel-de-Mierden in a location field, but as the village was destroyed in the 80 year war and not rebuilt for generations it simply cannot be correct for many of them so whenever I see that name in a location field I also change it to “The Netherlands”.

Obviously people will continue to use Holland conversationally in reference to the country, I do, my father does, but that doesn’t mean we should not encourage people to use the correct term when building profiles.

PS You can just type “nl” into any of Geni’s location fields and the Google API will recognise it and auto-load “The Netherlands”.

I know you meant well
it is the same as to say that Obama is the president/mayer of the
little village Amerika (Drenthe), a place in Drenthe in our country
or Saksen, Germany.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika

Also "the Netherlands" is not a good name,
just as Great Britain: England, Wales, Scotland, NorthernIreland

we are "het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden",
existing of
Nederland
Aruba, Curaçao en Sint Maarten (part of early "de Antillen")

and in earlyer centuries:
suriname
indonesie
were also in this "Kingdom"

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninkrijk_der_Nederlanden

What you say is correct but I’ll make two points.

Take an imaginary ancestor from Utrecht, if I type “Utrecht” in Birth Location field of Geni the resulting display is “Utrecht, Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands”, not “het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden”.

Secondly, if this imaginary ancestor is born in 1100 AD then he certainly was not born in “het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden” as that political entity did not exist, so while “the Netherlands” is not technically accurate for either the modern nor the ancient time period I feel it is the best compromise. I could spend ½ an hour reading up on what the political structure of Utrecht was in 1000 AD (I’d guess the Bishopric of Utrecht, perhaps you know without even checking) but then should that name be entered in the location field in its English, Dutch, German or Latin version?

Everyone (except maybe a few Americans) know where “the Netherlands” is I think it’s reasonable to use that name.

One last comment, I have immediate family born in Curacao and some still living there but listing their location as “het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden” wouldn’t make any sense to me even though as you say it is the correct political term. I live in “the Commonwealth of Australia” but I’d never put that down as my address on a post card! :)

HOLLAND refers to the part ot the Netherlands that is now the provinces North- en South-Holland, the lower part of our country, I think. The southern inhabitants of Limburg en North-Brabant still feel a difference between this part of the Netherlands and their regions (most katholic versus protestant).

Private User

Y is not the same as IJ, you are right maybe, but if you search for a name with a Y in dutch online-archives like WIEWASWIE you should mostly use the IJ-version.

I know that i don't edit the profiles in what today is the Netherlands on a common basis, but it's completely wrong to damage the profile that has the correctly titled profile and change the place name to the contemporary one.

What you have to keep in mind is that the suggestion that Geni provides when you begin to type is only a suggestion for ease of use, just like "propose last names" feature. You don't absolutely have to insist that a wife takes her husband's name "just because when i click add wife, Geni fills that field in".

I do edit many profiles in what today is "Russia", and yes, i do my best to research what the place was called in the time of the event. We should be as historically accurate as possible, rather than attempting to rewrite the history to make it easier for some software of the other.

What I do when it is about our former kolonised 'country-part' Nederlands Oost-Indie, i do use the present country-name Indonesia in the field for countries for we have to admit that they are no longer part of our Kingdom, but in the fore-last field I use the term 'v/m Ned. Oost-Indie' what refers to
'voornalig' what means: 'what once existed as'.

In that way you do both things: make it easier nowadays for the TomTom to ride & drive to the mentioned country-site and city with google-terms AND you recognise the history.

What about that?

The interesting thing to notice is that the form that get sent to the Geni server actually includes 'latitude' and 'longitude' data along with the place name (for example: birth_location%5Blatitude%5D and birth_location%5Blongitude%5D). Just that this info is not exposed to the users. It would be quite useful for what you are describing, and would allow to record the correct place and at the same time explain to the contemporary people, who may want to go to that place exactly where it is.

Mike Stangel, could these fields be exposed to the people who edit profiles? And are they even recorded in the database somewhere or are they for "future expansion"?

I fully AGREE with Vladimir !