This reminds me of dealing with dates, in that parsing and outputting the countless conventions is nearly impossible, but more people than realize it can side-s

This reminds me of dealing with dates, in that parsing and outputting the countless conventions is nearly impossible, but more people than realize it can side-step the task entirely. For instance, most systems that request a name are just asking how to address you on-screen. You can answer that for 99.99% of people with a single unicode string, and for the remaining 0.01% with a drawing if you are so inclined. Sure some people will have no name or multiple names, but these people are still able to respond to the question "what should I call you?". And then, of course, you need to treat what you get back as an unparseable black box, and not use it for anything but to address them. Or maybe you're making a system that accepts payments that needs to compare names to names on credit cards. In this case what you want still isn't The Complete List of Things You Associate with the Word "Name", but the name that is on their credit card. Or maybe you're making something that interacts with legal information, in which case you want the name on the specific legal documents you care about. Or maybe you're making some form of social network, in which case you do want to allow multiple names (if you're being thorough), but you still don't care about parsing those names. There aren't many instances in which you need to fully parse and understand a variety of naming conventions.