Answers.Body: <p>You can certainly do what you suggest and change the household name to <strong>Smith, Tony &amp; Michelle</strong> or you could change it to <strong>Tony &amp; Michelle Smith</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>There are pros and cons for each.</p>
  
  <p>Try it out on your test site, or on one of the <a href="https://civicrm.org/demo" rel="nofollow">demo sites</a> for two different households and pay attention to the form of the Addressee and mail and postal greetings in each case.</p>
  
  <p>Also try searching for the households using both quick and advanced search.  </p>
  
  <p>You will have to decide which format for the household name suits your particular system best.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-05-24T13:31:41.587Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-05-24T13:31:41.587Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: JoAnne
Body: <p>We are a non profit volunteer group with 16000 members. Our members are household members and then have individuals with a relationship link. One issue that is bugging us is that when we look for example at our membership list, the household name is that of the last name of the household. EG Smith. However we have 92 "smiths". What is the best way to narrow down which smith we are looking at. Should we also include after their last name a comma followed by eg Tony &amp; Michelle? Our volunteers sometimes need to quickly look at the persons name and choose their record. Or is their a better way.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2016-05-24T10:53:17.530Z
Comments.Text: are you recording email ID against contact ?
Comments.UserDisplayName: Ramesh - ARTECH Consultancy
Tags: <civimember>
Title: Household Membership Identifiers
ThreadText: # Household Membership Identifiers
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-05-24)
  
  We are a non profit volunteer group with 16000 members. Our members are household members and then have individuals with a relationship link. One issue that is bugging us is that when we look for example at our membership list, the household name is that of the last name of the household. EG Smith. However we have 92 "smiths". What is the best way to narrow down which smith we are looking at. Should we also include after their last name a comma followed by eg Tony & Michelle? Our volunteers sometimes need to quickly look at the persons name and choose their record. Or is their a better way.
  
  **Tags:** civimember
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: are you recording email ID against contact ?  
  
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  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2016-05-24. Score: 2
  
  You can certainly do what you suggest and change the household name to **Smith, Tony & Michelle** or you could change it to **Tony & Michelle Smith**.
  
  There are pros and cons for each.
  
  Try it out on your test site, or on one of the [demo sites](https://civicrm.org/demo) for two different households and pay attention to the form of the Addressee and mail and postal greetings in each case.
  
  Also try searching for the households using both quick and advanced search.
  
  You will have to decide which format for the household name suits your particular system best.
  
  
  ---
  
  