Verbum Tip 2a: Personal Names special considerations

MJ. Smith

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Verbum 9 Tip 2: Personal Names special considerations

In these considerations, the following are taken as givens:

• Find (in this panel) is excluded from the discussion. Only Inline Searches and the Search Panel are considered.
• Unless otherwise specified, the search argument is in English for which I know a stemming routine is used for finding all grammatical forms. Languages with morphological data (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic . . .) are handled differently. I have no direct knowledge of other interface languages.
• Some features are intended for specific uses in specific languages. This will be noted where needed.
• Except for “personal name is a common noun”, the information supplied applies to any text argument.
• A Basic search and a Bible search respond identically to the search options discussed here.

Personal Names special considerations: other grammatical forms

From Verbum Help:

Miscellaneous Search Options

There are a number of options related to search in the panel menu  in the top-right of the panel to expand the panel menu:

•   Send searches here: the current search panel becomes the default destination for searches.

•   Match case: runs a search that is case-sensitive.

•   Match all word forms: includes results for alternative forms of a word.

•   Match equivalent references: merges results for equivalent terms but of different types, such as Marriage (Topic) and Marriage (Cultural Concept).

•   Show whole verses: the complete verse is displayed, with the text wrapping to the next line(s) as necessary (Grid view only).^[1]

• Use the Panel Menu icon (1) to open the Panel Menu
• The options of interest to us in this context are:
  • Match case i.e. typographical case
  • Match all word forms i.e. grammatical/morphological variations of the text

A check mark in front of the option indicates that it is on; otherwise it is off.

With “Match all word forms” off, a search for “Abram” will not select the possessive “Abram’s”.

On the left is an Inline Basic Search which identifies 54 occurrences. Note the red boxes around the possessive forms of Abram which are not selected as indicated by the lack of highlight.

On the right is a Bible Search which identifies 54 occurrences in 47 verses. The red box again marks the possessive forms.

However, if one sets “Match all word forms” on, the results increase.

Now, both searches show 61 occurrences and possessive forms are highlighted.

Note: best practices leave “Match all word forms” on, turning it off only in special circumstances.

To show that the 61 is 54 occurrences of “Abram” and 7 occurrences of the possessive “Abram’s”, turn off “Match all word forms” and run a Search on “Abram” and on “Abram’s”.

Note that this also proves that the figures given in the Textual Searches of the Bible Word Study included all forms.

Personal Names special considerations: compound names

There are compound names, e.g. “John Mark” or “Jesus Christ” that need to be enclosed in quotation marks for intended results:

• John Mark: this search argument asks to find both John and Mark in the search text –  any order and intervening words are allowed.
• “John Mark”: this search argument asks that John Mark be found adjacent to each other and in that order.

I use Jesus Christ, a name and title, as my example for the ease in finding the various possible results.

• Note that on the left Jesus and Christ are highlighted in separate colors indicating they are separate search items; on the right, they are highlighted continuously in a single color indicating they are a single search item.
• On the left, only one case, marked by a red arrow, has Jesus Christ in that sequence. Rom. 8:11 is an example of the order Jesus Christ but with intervening words. All other cases are of Christ Jesus.
• On the right, thanks to the quotation marks, all results are Jesus Christ -- adjacent and in that sequence

 

Personal Names special considerations: personal name is common noun

Some personal names are also common nouns, e.g. Lot (Abraham’s nephew) and lot (to cast lots); Job (the man tested) and job (employment). The method shown here would generally be used on monographs and other untagged resources. It has the following limitations:

• It works only if the language uses upper-case initial letters to distinguish proper nouns from common nouns.
• It may return false positives for the initial word of a sentence, words within titles . . .

From Verbum Help:

Match case: runs a search that is case-sensitive.^[2]

The Match case search option is set in the Panel menu as a toggle on/off i.e. checked/blank.

The search on the left is not case sensitive – note all the references to lot/lots in Leviticus. However, the search on the right is case sensitive – note all the references are to the person Lot and no references from Leviticus are selected.

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^[1] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).

^[2] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).