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When I'm documenting the place where an event occurred, should I write the name in my own language or in the native language of the place?
For example: Spain or España
I am assuming that I can only enter one place name per event listing since I haven't seen any systems that allow me to list multiple version of the same place name.
Two questions regarding place names are asked repeatedly:
The fact that these questions are asked so much indicates that there are no simple answers. You can come up with advantages and disadvantages of either way you answer either question. There is no right or wrong answer. Pick one system and use notes as needed to add the extra information. The easiest approach is to use today's names in your own language and to add notes about the old names and languages.
An alternative way is to create multiple facts within your software when presented with more than one location/spelling. Family Tree Maker allows you to create multiple facts. A different example of their use would be if you had two different birth dates from two different sources (not unusual). Therefore you would have two birth facts listed. No reason you couldn't do the same thing with location names.
Remember that the information that you find can be heavily influenced by the language in which you search.
When tracking Welsh ancestors, I have found that using anglicised place names can cause me to miss many references. If I was reading about Monmouth, would I even pay attention to information about the town of Trefynwy? Yet they are the same place.
My rule of thumb is to ask "If I ever needed to redo any of this work, what would I need to search?" and to record the names of people and places accordingly.
Always write with an audience in mind. Who will eventually see this, and what is the simplest form for them to read/interpret? If you have living relatives in two countries, you may wish to keep two databases (English/Spanish). I sometimes generate family reports in both English and German for my American and German cousins.
I have come up with two ideas for this problem. First, in my records any place can have multiple names (e.g. in different languages). Second, for each place I also save the GPS position. This is especially useful for addresses, which sometimes disappear.
Note that this problem is also relevant for names and surnames. Again, making multiple language entries helps.
