It is convention to enter ladies with their maiden surname. For more distant ancestors, we sometimes don’t know this for certain. For example, we may know that a lady was a widow (as she was recorded as such when she married), but we don’t know her original maiden surname. Commonly, prior to the start of civil registration, the source of the mother’s surname is based on a marriage, and we might have found a possible marriage, but not be certain it is the correct one, and so unsure of the mother’ surname. We can use the Surname certainty or type box to indicate this. The surname is then treated with caution in narrative reports, and shown with a question mark on charts, if applicable.