One point in favor of the separate fields is that users in general suck at computer input.[0] So we have a user entering her name into our website. And then we

One point in favor of the separate fields is that users in general suck at computer input.[0] So we have a user entering her name into our website. And then we need to compare that against some database into which she entered her name five years ago. If we have one freeform field, then we have to deal with small inconsistencies that may or may not be significant. Say the user has three given names and a family name. For whatever reason, she puts double spaces surrounding the two middle names, but she didn't last time. Or jams them together, maybe with another punctuation. Are those semantically meaningful differences? Do the spaces indicate we have two separate people? Would a shortened form for one of the names be meaningful? Or if she misspells the abbreviation for "Marquise"; is that part of her name now? Etc. If we're accepting that names can have infinitely varied forms, and that whatever the user enters right now is canonical, then questions like that become very difficult. Normalization for comparison is a real requirement in some cases, and separate name fields give us a leg up on that. I'm not saying this is insurmountable, or that we should make it the user's problem. Just that the single field doesn't quite solve everything in one fell swoop. --- [0]:I don't say this to blame the users -- computers overall could almost certainly do more to not leak the details of storage into the front end where users have to deal with it.