Q: How do I show Alternative Given Names for a person

A: Perhaps by creating an alternative given name stub page.

As with unstable family surnames, the birth name of the individual should always be use to determine the wiki page name of the primary page for the individual.

In many cases, it will be sufficient to reflect the alternative given name in the page title and page description, for example "Reeves, Walter Harry (aka Reeves, Harry)"

Where an individual was universally known by an alternative given name, either a nickname or perhaps their second given name, then to make it possible to easily find them by that known given name, a "stub page" may optionally be created for the alternative given name which links back to the primary page for that individual.

The primary page should be named as "Surname_GivenName_RandomNumberSuffix" and created with all the content pertaining to this individual.

A stub page named "Surname_AlternativeGivenName_RandonNumberSuffix" should then be created with the same RandomNumberSuffix as the primary page and the following snippet of code added to it

There are three simple changes to make

1. On the first line, replace Headline from Page by the actual headline from the primary page which should look like Surname, Given Names (aka Surname, Alternative GivenName).
2. On the second and last lines, replace Primary_Page by the primary wiki page name for this individual.
3. Copy the page description from the primary wiki page and add {re-direct} at the end of the description.

Consider, for example, the case of Walter Harry Reeves, who was universally know as Harry. The primary wiki page is found at Reeves_Walter_Harry_28. Unless an alternative given name stub page is created, anybody browsing the list of entries Reeves, H... would unfortunately not find this Harry Reeves.

The alternative given name stub page would have a wiki page name of "Reeves_Harry_28" and the content of that page would be
And the page description would read
            Reeves, Walter Harry (aka Reeves, Harry) (1893 HAM - 1963 HAM) {re-direct}


There are two piece of tiki magic here. Firstly, the REDIRECT plugin causes the Primary_Page to be automatically displayed when the AlternativeGivenName page is requested. Secondly, the (firstnamevar( ... | ... )) style of wiki link means Admins can easily find pages using this first name variation technique.
Including {redirect}   {re-direct} as part of the page description helps us not waste time when we are reviewing the list of Orphan pages. (The addition of a hyphen to "re-direct" became necessary to avoid a bug which caused an error when processing the page description.)

These guidance notes are part of a group of pages covering the handling of names within TRP. For additional information on unstable family surnames, please see FAQ_Family_Name_Variation and for guidance on reflecting both a woman's maiden and married names, see FAQ_Indexing_Married_Women. See also Renamed Pages