There is no single solution. In terms of complexity required, I would suggest: - Not having a field, if you don't need it. - Having a single Unicode variable w

There is no single solution. In terms of complexity required, I would suggest: - Not having a field, if you don't need it. - Having a single Unicode variable width field for "how would you like us to call you" (so not necessarily a full or formal name), with a maximum length of at least 1K characters. - Having two such fields for "given name" and "full name", with the understanding that neither may match the legal name because of practical limitations. Which field you use depends on the formality required by the specific use. If your business is related to certain government, healthcare, legal, etc. stuff you'll probably have domain specific requirements, but I could imagine you might need to be able to have several names connected to a single person. One scheme that might be useful in such a situation might be: - Having a set of (description, name) Unicode string tuples (variable length, generous max length). For example, one might have: {("Given name", "John"), ("Birth name", "Vera de la Cruz"), ("Legal name", "John Quincy de la Cruz-Stevens")}