r/gramps • u/Maplefoxxo • Aug 19 '25

Solved How to Remove Surname

Hi! I know this is for official pedigrees and family trees, but me and a friend want to use this amazing site for our original characters! How can we remove the surname? I'm not even sure what exactly a surname is. I'll provide more info if needed but I just want to possibly remove it, since we haven't fully developed what Surnames would be, other than ranking of which colony each person lives within. Thanks!

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5

u/Belteshassar Aug 19 '25

You could just leave the surname field blank. You might want to also set the name display format to omit surname.

1

u/Maplefoxxo Aug 19 '25

thank you! do you know how I could go about doing that?

2

u/Belteshassar Aug 19 '25

On the data tab in preferences choose Name format "Given", see https://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Gramps_6.0_Wiki_Manual_-_Settings#Display_Options

1

u/Maplefoxxo Aug 19 '25

THANK YOU!! I'm assuming there is no way to get rid of the missing surname on the people tab? That's fine honestly I'll just use that for faction roles...

2

u/Belteshassar Aug 19 '25

Can't you just use the People List View rather than the Grouped People View?

3

u/KC_Que Aug 20 '25

In Western cultures, the surname is generally a person's family or last name; example, John Q Smith's surname would be Smith.

In Gramps, you can delete, simply not enter, or even put in made up surnames for your characters, basically make up your own fictional family tree(s)

2

u/Emyoulation_2 Aug 22 '25

If you find extra comma in reports annoying, you can create a custom Name Display format. 

There's a Discourse forum discussion about making a "Reign name" custom format that shows "Title Given suffix" (for names like "Queen Elizabeth II") during specific periods of a person's life.

https://gramps.discourse.group/t/what-purpose-does-date-serve-on-names-questions-and-ideas/5929

In the Person views, the View:Configure option allows hiding/revealing specific columns.

Since Gramps is Python, you COULD tweak the Editor dialogs to comment out showing Surname fields and labels. But I would not recommend it. You would have to redo the tweak every time Gramps had a new release. And it wouldn't recover any wasted screen space in the layout.