Library module Keyword Philosophy for people?

[OogieM]

Operating System:Mac Os El Capitan
Lightroom Version: latest CC
Question or Description of Problem:

More of a philosophy question. How do you keyword people's names?

Initially I started with firstname_lastname but quickly realized that was not particularly useful when looking at the list of keywords and seeking related family members.

In my genealogy stuff we're taught to use lastname_firstname_middlename and for females to use the maiden surname as the lastname and document the marriages separately due to multiple marriages and divorces. That's fine for most paper documents but falls apart when trying to use LR to keyword the images of these people.

I'm thinking of creating a hierarchical structure that mirrors my genealogy folders so
people

family group which is the last name

individual name in format lastname_firstname_middlename(s)
​

My problem is how to document people whose names change via marriage over the time I have pictures of them.

Before I get too far along in the keywording I wanted to see how other folks handle this.

 

[Roelof Moorlag]

I have struggled with this also and i choose to use lastname firstname and only use birthnames.
For some people (women) for who i'm used to use their mariaged name, i put these in as synonym.

 

[Tony Jay]

Another thought may be to use different hierarchies for maiden names and married names.

Tony Jay

 

[Dan Marchant]

[Family Name] [First name] [middle name] nee [maiden name]
If someone changed their name by deed poll or marriage I would just update the family name and possibly add "formerly [old family name]" or alternatively have their previous name in the Synonym section.

 

[rob211]

And because of the way you need to search for text, some folks use "John_Smith" instead of "John Smith."

I prefer using just the name. Making a hierarchy based on relationships can quickly turn into a genealogy project, or something out of a biology textbook. If I needed a way to find all the Smiths after some had remarried, changed names, etc, I'd use a smart collection. Or in the case of my own family I just make a keyword called "my_family" and add or remove that keyword from people as relationships change.

 

[OogieM]

I routinely use _ and - separators in file names and so for me a keyword needs to have no spaces in it just because that's how I sort and search for things. I like the idea of the full path to the person being shown as the keyword.

Thanks for the suggestions.