When people change their names, how can Daminion help to keep you up to date?
Written by Uwe Noack
The catalog contains items related to two people: The names assigned to their People Tags are Jenny Green and Paul Miller.
They get married and Jenny changes her surname from Green to Miller.
How can we take account of this in Daminion?
1. Do nothing
No changes: Jenny keeps her birth name in the catalog’s People Tag. All new items are assigned to the People Tag “Green|Jenny”.
By Tag-Selection you get all Jenny’s items. But you don‘t know anything about her change of name.
2. Create an additional sub-tag for “Jenny Miller”
- Add this tag to all “Jenny Green” items. Now Jenny has two People Tags: “Green|Jenny” and “Miller|Jenny”. Tag-Selection for either “Green|Jenny” or “Miller|Jenny” will give you all of Jenny’s items.
Don’t forget to assign both tags to all newly imported items. - Don’t assign the “Miller|Jenny” tag to the existing “Green|Jenny” items. All Jenny’s items originating after her name has changed are assigned to the “Miller|Jenny” People Tag.
Tag-Selection “Green|Jenny” will give you all Jenny’s items before she was married and “Miller|Jenny” all items after she was married.
To get all Jenny’s items, CTRL-click as you select both tags.
3. Change the People Tag surname
Change Jenny’s People Tag surname (Rename – F2) from “Green” to “Miller”. In this case, the tags will be merged to “Miller”.
You can’t change the surname if there are any other sub-tags for “Green”, e.g. her brother “Axel”, her mother “Lisa” and her dad “Martin”, as you can see in the next examples.
The additional photo of Jenny is a photo of Jenny Miller.
4. Use Synonyms
Note: Synonyms don‘t work with Tag-Selection. You have to use either “Quick Search” or “Advanced Search”.
The synonym “Miller Green” is assigned to the People Tags “Green|Jenny” and “Miller|Jenny”.
The first photo below is assigned to “Green|Jenny”, the second to “Miller|Jenny”.
When using “Quick Search” to search for Jenny and no one else, you must use the options “All Words” or “Exact Phrase Match”.
Using the synonym “Miller” for the “Green|Jenny” People tag doesn‘t work – your search results will contain all other items with the family name “Green”. The same thing happens if you assign the synonym “Green” to the “Miller|Jenny” People Tag.
5. Combine the People Tag with other tags
Other tags can be used in combination with the People Tag to handle this task.
For example, you can enter the Collection Tag “Miller Green” and assign it to all items under the “Green|Jenny” and “Miller|Jenny” People tags. You can now select all Jenny’s items by Tag-Selecting this Collection tag.
Another way is to use Additional Keyword tags.
6. Final remarks
It would be much more complicated if Paul and Jenny were to divorce and both get remarried sometime later.
“Advanced Search” has no limitations on searching with a combination of different tags. You can save your combinations as Saved Searches. You really need to find a way that works best for you. There is no universal solution that fits all possible requirements.
Tests were carried out on Daminion build 1608 server catalog using the following preferences:
7. Copyright and license
All the free stock photos are downloaded from http://www.pexels.com/
For further information about copyrights and licenses, please check the homepage above.