File Naming Conventions for Genealogists

So I guess I have been slacking a little in the blogging department, but getting back into it is a lot like starting to workout again after taking a long break so bear with me. I could sit here and write a list of excuses why I have been so absent the past week, but what's the point of that? One thing I have been doing in that time though was organizing my downloaded records and sharing some of them with family members. 

Often times when we think of organizing our research we think of a bunch of binders or files in a filing cabinet. The reality is that the modern genealogist is a product of the digital age and thus replaced paper with digital files. It is so easy to download a file, yet so few genealogists take the next logical step of changing the file name. Not only does renaming the file make it easier for us to find it later on, but it also makes it easier for somebody else to understand its contents when you share it with them. One of the first things that I did when organizing my digital records was establish a standard naming convention, then altered it slightly depending on the record type. The standard convention that I chose was:

File Type - Name(s) - Date 

If I ever have more than one record that shares the same name I either specify the collection (ie. Drouin Collection BMD versus Provincial BMD records), or place a bracketed number at the end of the file names. 

Below are the conventions that I use for specific types of records:

BMD Records – Provincial Collections

Birth – First Name Last Name – Year

Marriage – Name1Name2 – Year

Death – First Name Last Name – Year

Obituary – First Name Last Name – Newspaper – Date – Page #

Census Records

Year Country Census – Last Name

** If the household is split across two pages I add bracket number to the end of each file name

Immigration Records

The convention that I use for this type of record is dependent on if it's for one ancestor or a family.

Immigration – First Name Last Name – Vessel – Year

OR

Immigration – Last Name Family – Vessel – Year

Military

  Military – War – Record Type – First Name Last Name – Year

Government and Legal

Criminal – Record Type – First Name Last Name – Year

Government – School Discharge –First Name Last Name – School Name – Year

Government – Board of Guardians – Record Type –Last Name Family – Board – Year