You could create a custom item type named e.g. Aliases and/or AKA, and add any properties you need to that item, then you those as a “middle layer” item, with relation to your Character and to the Event.
I have to do this for a lot of documents and milestones in my historical research projects to be able to have a one person linked to multiple items and events within different periods of his/her life, when I also want those items to occur in e.g. the timeline as a milestone or a sub-event.
mostly because there is no way to have multiple parents for an item… and an item can occur as a child of multiple main “items” at the same time.
This is can be a problem if you want something to be reflected in e.g. the timeline.
So for me i can have a main event Journey - with sub-event like Departure, Arrival, and I will also have relations to Ports of Call, First Port of Call, Last Port of Call etc.
One person can be registered in a Crew list in the FPoC with one name, and in another Crew List in the LPoC with another, and with the third variant of a name in a Ships logbook, and then with a fourth variant in a completely different Manifest, all connected to the one Journey.
To be able to register and have control of all this variants, I use an ALIAS Item that I link to the Document (I add this as a timeline item) and an item of the correct sub-event of the Journey Event, I also link the Document Item to the same sub-event.
here is an example:
- Person → Alias 1 → Document 1 (e.g. a Person’s Service Record)-> Crew List as a Sub-Item of the Departure Event → “Journey Event 1”
- Person → Alias 2 → Document 2 (e.g. Ships Log List of Crew)-> Crew list Item of Main Journey Event
- Person → Alias 3 → Document 3 (e.g. Emigration Manifest) → Crew List Item of sub-event Arrival Event → Main Journey Event
The Ships log are also linked to both the Ship Item and the Shipping Company Item, the different Documents is linked to sources and sorted under those as child items, and therefore can not be added directly as child-item to other items in the timeline.
for example the persons service records (list or book), can hold information of hundreds of journeys, and is sorted as a document (source) under an archive as a child of this, that is sorted under a repository also as a child.
To be able to have that document in the timeline, and related to all the correct Journeys, I need to link them to another item that I can add to an Event.
It is possible to relate the document directly, but because it is not possible with multiple parents for an item, I can not use either the main Journey Event, nor any sub-event as container (parent) and still have it sorted in the side panel where I want it.
You can get away with it in a different way if you don’t want to visualize the “items” in the timeline…
E.g. the AKA or Alias item, can be linked to any Event or other Item directly, but if it is sorted as a sub (child) item under the person, you can not ad it as a sub to another item (event), only link it.
So I have created custom items for Aliases, AKAs, Crew lists, Ships Manifests, Emigration Manifests, etc. etc.
If I find that a name variant is used multiple times, I link the Alias/AKA item as a mid-layer link object.
You can of course just create a property field for your Character with the label of Alias, and link the normal way… but you will have less visual control for when the alias vs. the real name is actually used, and if you don’t need the layer of “document” that I have, you can of course link the “Alias” item directly to any timeline item (event).
But to be honest, a genealogy software like Gramps, is way better for this, than AT.
