Monday Minutes: Preferred Name

by Jessie Zairo on Apr 28, 2025

In this week's Monday Minutes, Nick and Jessie talk about the new “Preferred name” field in the patron information form. This is visible in staff and OPAC patron forms by default.

Bug 28633 - Add a preferred name field to patrons

Patron Information

The Preferred name field takes precedence and is displayed where patron names are displayed throughout Koha.

Questions came in asking if the Preferred name field has no value, what happens?

Answer: The first name is displayed. This will show up on the patron record.

Notices

Depending on how you want this to display in your patron notices, you will use the following

• Use of firstname in notices and other templates will continue to display the first name.
• Use preferred_name to display the patron’s preferred name.

System Preference

If you want to hide the preferred name field, you will need to hide it in all interfaces to avoid any discrepancies or confusion.

The system preferences are

1. BorrowerUnwantedField
2. PatronSelfModificationBorrowerUnwantedField
3. PatronSelfRegistrationBorrowerUnwantedField
4. PatronSelfModificationMandatoryField
5. PatronSelfRegistrationBorrowerMandatoryField

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Koha Community Challenge 2025

Additional Resources

Koha Manual - System Preferences

Koha Manual - Add new patron