On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:33:20 -0500, "Kathy R." wrote:


Fred said he had to address the issue of couple that did not take the other
person’s name – such as Mark Jones and Mary Smith. Do you have that issue,
and if so how are you address it?

If I'm addressing both it would be Mr. and Mrs. Mark Jones (similar to
if it were Mark Jones III and Mary Smith, I'd address them as Mr. and
Mrs. Mark Jones III even though Mary isn't the III) Singly, It'd be Mr.
Mark Jones and Ms. Mary Smith.

Why do you have a Family Last Name on the Family table?

From Fred: There is probably ony one sentence that I'd disagree with,
and that is when Dennis said that listing a seperate family name would
be a duplication of data and thus violation of normalization. The
people's names are, of course an entity. But the family name is also
an entity, which is the name that they wish their family to be called
by. Although last names would often be duplicated, "often" doesn't meet
the standard for being able to derive one from the other.

Hmm... hadn't really thought of that before. I suppose, since if I'm
using I consider the last name of the primary contact to be the "family
name," that it would be duplicate data. But as Fred says, "a family name
is also an entity." For now I'm going to leave the field as it is.
But I will think on it some more. If anyone else has an opinion, either
pro or con, and would like to share their reasoning, I'd love to hear it.

My church database does have a family name field. For one thing, asserting
that all members of a household should have the same surname is not true in
all households! I'm John Vinson; my wife is Karen Strickler. There are two
sisters in my church, living together; both are widows, and both kept their
married names; there are lots of such anomalies. I'd much rather have the
flexibility to address a family as "The Andersons", "David & Angelina
Ramirez", "Mr. & Dr. Roberts", "Ann Jones and Mary Smith", or however *that
family* would prefer to be addressed.

--

John W. Vinson [MVP]