4 ms·

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sens

"Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." This is the way to go. "The family/given name format doesn't make much sense here." It doesn't make much sense in many places all over the world. In Germany technically speaking our given names are a set and we can have many of them. While it is practically necessary to write them out in a certain order in our documents, from a legal standpoint they are all equal. There is no first and second given name and most certainly no middle name. Consequence is that in everyday life today I can be Hans and tomorrow Fritz. I can be Hans Fritz or Fritz Hans too, but not Hans-Fritz (with a hyphen) except if it's written like that in my birth certificate and then the order is fixed and I can't decide to be Hans, Fritz or Fritz-Hans. The trade-off in this system is that it is much harder to change your name here then in most other places. In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first, exactly like in Asia.

toyg 3y ago
> In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first It's probably a Roman thing. Julius Caesar was actually "Caesar, of the gens Julia", so last-name first. In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies.
- pomstazlesa 3y ago
  Same thing in Hungary.
- danmaz74 3y ago
  Roman naming conventions were very different from current Italian ones, and Caesar's full name was Gaius Julius Caesar, where Gaius is the closest thing to what we would call a first name. If he had some brothers, they would all have been "Julius Caesar", and only the praenomen would have distinguished them. For example, Julius Caesar's father was also named Gaius Julius Caesar, and had (most likely) a brother whose name was Sextus Julius Caesar.
- cge 3y ago
  Roman naming conventions[1] technically did have a personal first name that came first and was called that: first name or forename is a reasonably direct translation for praenomen. The complexity is that by the late republic praenomina were largely from such a small set of names that they were not particularly useful to distinguish anyone, and they became somewhat of a formality that would often be omitted. Julius Caesar has the 'group/last' name first because it doesn't include his first name at all: including it he would be Gaius Julius Caesar. The cognomen (there Caesar), meanwhile, was a bit of an inconsistent mess that in various times and contexts could be personal, hereditary, honorific, given, adopted... [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    Hereditary cognomina were used to distinguish different major branches of large, powerful clans. Some sort of device to specify which subbranch of an enormous group you're talking about appears to be necessary in every place that has such enormous groups; in imperial China, then as now, vast swathes of the population were covered by just a handful of surnames, but the practice developed of referring to notable families by a combination of their name and the location where they were dominant. So Caesar's close relatives were all also called Caesar, which is how it got to be an imperial title. You might think that with the original cognomen locked into place for such families, members would get a second cognomen so that there would be at least one part of their name that could identify them. But apparently not.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      They _sometimes_ did, I think. Here's one (non-Julian) example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Numidicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Num...
    - Tainnor 3y ago
      Some famous people got additional names, agnomina, such as "Africanus". And Roman emperors were later known for inflationary use of such designations. You could run a minor campaign on the Rhine and call yourself Germanicus for example. The whole part about the Roman naming system indicating heritage became even more complicated when Caracalla (properly named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) made every free man in the Empire a Roman citizen and now basically everyone was called "Marcus Aurelius" without ever having had any ties to the Aurelii family.
- puszczyk 3y ago
  In Poland informally it’s always <given name> <last name>. Formally, it depends most places are on the same as informal, but particularly military and some other bureaucracies will use <last name> <given name>. I always thought this is a holdout from the pre-computer days to make it easier to sort alphabetically (last names are a bit better distributed than the popular first names). In France they seem to prefer <LAST NAME> (yes, all caps) <First name> even for less formal things.
  - zerocrates 3y ago
    I've seen the capitals convention to designate family names in several places, like with people from East Asian countries corresponding in English. The point is to take away ambiguity about which name order is being used and therefore how to address the writer.
  - cafeinux 3y ago
    Not sure how it is done in other countries, but it's very likely that the custom of using the last name in all caps exists elsewhere. AFAIK, it comes from the fact that some last names are also common first names, so it's easier to distinguish between the two like this, as the order isn't really that important. For example, if I see a DIDIER Bernard or a Bernard DIDIER, I know I need to call him M. Didier in a formal context or just Bernard in an informal one.
  - smcl 3y ago
    I've seen this in Czech too - sometimes lastname first but maybe more in old-school things. I think I'm registered with the Czech FA as "McSurname Sean" :-D Also this "reversal" had me confused when we hosted a French exchange student without knowing French (I spoke German, but the teachers knew my family were happy to host if they needed). His name was written like "KHALID Mohamed" and he was very polite so he didn't really correct me when I was calling him "Khalid", and since I was unfamiliar with Algerian names I had experience to suggest "Khalid" was more surname-y than firstname-y. It sorted itself out after a day or two though :-)
- Archelaos 3y ago
  > It's probably a Roman thing. There is very likely no connection. The introduction of surnames in Germany took place in the 15th century (somewhat earlier in German speaking parts of Switzerland). In Franconia, the "ethnic" distinct northern part of which is today Bavaria and which was never a part of the Roman empire, the last-name first custom also occurs in a few places such as Bamberg.
  - weinzierl 3y ago
    The Romans weren't but Napoleon was, so maybe it is more of an indirect Roman influence?
- throaway230831 3y ago
  Gaius (also written Caius) was his given name, Ivlivs (Julius) the family name, Caesar the cognomen. In inscriptions (short): CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR In speaking he would (in English;)) rather formally introduce himself as "Gaius of the Iulii, called Caesar". His mother called him Gaius, his peers called him Caesar once he got or choose?) this name.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    Wouldn't Ceasar be much closer to his last name,though? It's definitely not his personal nickname. His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'. The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.
    - throaway230831 3y ago
      I stand corrected: in case of Caesar, it was already hereditary in his family. Initially, it was more of a nickname or even an earned name, like with Caesars contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - qwytw 3y ago
        > Magnus Nicer than his other nickname 'adulescentulus carnifex ("teenage butcher") ' I guess.. But yeah, the cognomen seems weird/hard to understand e.g. Pompey's dad was called Strabo but he seems to have never used that name himself, while other like Ceasa, Metellus or Cicero were pretty much just surnames. Romans probably found their naming system as confusing as we do so they started using nicknames ad hoc. It was even more awful if you were a woman, you technically didn't even have your own name until the imperial period. You and your sisters would just be called Aemilia I, Aemilia II, III etc (or the 'elder'/'younger'). if your father was belonged to the Aemilius clan for example...
- darkwater 3y ago
  > In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies. Only that... it didn't? The vast majority of bureaucracy and even many private entities in Italy use and strongly prefer the "Surname Birthname" format.
rob74 3y ago
In Hungary it's also last name first, both officially and informally - not sure if it's some Asian influence or something else...
- hinata08 3y ago
  France as well I believe that it's mostly the English speaking world that is strict with having "first name" first and "last name" last. It's not an Asian cultural feature to have family name first, but it's an English speaking thing to have it last. OP isn't trying to use his software in Asia specifically. He's just adapting to non US market.
  - jimktrains2 3y ago
    In the English-speaking world (or at least in the USA) we sort by last name, so any list of names you get is always last, first. For that reason many forms (though not all) will have the last name as the first thing you fill in.
  - retrac 3y ago
    French uses the same convention as English. First then last. No one would ever say, or write, "Macron Emmanuel est le président de la France". In languages like Japanese or Hungarian, that's what family name first means.
    - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
      If you were writing a letter to him, though, you might put his name on the envelope as MACRON Emmanuel.
FearNotDaniel 3y ago
Agreed. Currently consulting for an org which is having this very debate; the consensus is leaning towards replacing FirstName/LastName with FullName (i.e how are you generally identified) and PreferredName (how do you like to be addressed). Some additional observations from the German-speaking world (both Vienna and rural Austria): - yes, we also often refer to people, even in everyday speech, as LastName FirstName - often when referring to someone by name they are also given a definite article (equivalent of English "the"), e.g. "die Maria" or "der Gruber Hansi" - some people I've encountered with a background in the German aristocracy (not Austrian, where such titles are technically abolished) have extremely long legal names with multiple prince/duke/von X und Y etc clauses. This will be their full legal name that appears in the passport and must be used when booking flights etc, but is not what they would use as "full name" in an everyday business context. So "Full Name" might not always be "Legal Name". Also in a South Asian/Indian diaspora context, it is very common for people to be addressed by a semi-formal nickname that does not appear anywhere in their legal name. Come to think of it, I know one or two Austrian aristos* who use the same approach. * yes, technically the aristocracy is abolished but they still live in their castles and know each other's pedigrees...
- vidanay 3y ago
  Boris Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz
usrusr 3y ago
Germany used to be extremely restrictive about the set of character sequences that were allowed as given names. Some of that is probably still in place. When everybody was called Fritz or Hans or Gundula plus some word describing an ancestor's profession (it's all following the pattern of Smith and Miller), the order didn't really matter and that freedom was liberally abused: contexts that use the formal as identifier (Schmidt, Müller) and the given name only as a tie-breaker on collision will happily put the family name first, despite the reverse being specified in the terms themselves (Vorname and Nachname translate to pre, post, they really don't leave anything open to interpretation). But those informal regional order conventions? I read them as formalized disrespect for the individual: "you're not Hans who happens to be a Müller, you're a Müller who happens to be Hans. And the Müllers, they are part of us, so subsume!" Those regional things can be quite peculiar: a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her family took over, at some point between the thirty years war and the industrial revolution.
- Akronymus 3y ago
  > a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. I disambiguate my grandparents via the name of the farmhouse they live in, rather than the last names. I am from austria. But I dunno how common that is.
- morkalork 3y ago
  >sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her That has a very "part of the crew, part of the ship" feeling to it. Work the land, become the land, you're named for the land that you work! With marital status, who your father was, your family's occupation, and where you're working, all in a name, résumés needn't be a thing.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  When I was a child in Bavaria I was often called by house name + given name, in that order, especially by the elderly. The house name is different from the family name which appears in official documents like the birth certificate. Another difference between northern and southern Germany is the Münchner-Du and the Hamburger-Sie. In standard German we use the formal pronoun Sie with the last name in formal situations and the informal pronoun Du with the given name in informal situations. Nowadays in semi-formal situations, like between colleagues at work, it's completely informal but two or three decades ago it wasn't. Officially the workplace was supposed to be formal and often it was, but in many cases a mixture between formal and informal forms was common. In the north people tended to use the formal Sie but in conjunction with the given name, like Markus, können sie bitte das Auto holen." (Marcus, can thee get the car, please.), whereas in Bavaria the opposite combination of informal Du combined with the family name was prevalent, like *"Du, Frau Müller, kannst Du bitte das Auto holen." (You, Mrs. Miller, can you get the car please.)
zamalek 3y ago
> "Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." > This is the way to go. Agreed. Does anyone know of any reason to care about first/last, apart from it being part of My First SQL Database and sating our inner desire to create pointless taxonomies?
- Akronymus 3y ago
  Having to interact with other systems that expect first and last names to exist.
- mastax 3y ago
  Interfacing with external systems which require first/last, I suppose.
  - streetnoodles 3y ago
    This, we recently had to break up our "name" field into first/last name because we work with banks that require first/last name as separate fields. When we reference an account it has to match their records exactly.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    This. Many US government agencies (and therefore their forms and APIs) use FML. So, our software has a whole pile of names... FML, preferred, mailing, formal, sort name, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. It's a mess.
- ysavir 3y ago
  Largely cultural, I think, and being able to use each as might be appropriate within the culture. For example, using "Hi, <first name>" when sounding casual, but using "Dear Ms <last name>" when trying to sound formal. Nothing that's likely to be mission-critical, but a natural inclination based on cultural upbringing that we may not even realize is affecting our product design.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Sorting. Though I don't think there's a culture-agnostic way to do this, either.

toyg 3y ago

> In Bavaria where I live, the informal convention is also last name first It's probably a Roman thing. Julius Caesar was actually "Caesar, of the gens Julia", so last-name first. In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies.

pomstazlesa 3y ago
Same thing in Hungary.
danmaz74 3y ago
Roman naming conventions were very different from current Italian ones, and Caesar's full name was Gaius Julius Caesar, where Gaius is the closest thing to what we would call a first name. If he had some brothers, they would all have been "Julius Caesar", and only the praenomen would have distinguished them. For example, Julius Caesar's father was also named Gaius Julius Caesar, and had (most likely) a brother whose name was Sextus Julius Caesar.
cge 3y ago
Roman naming conventions[1] technically did have a personal first name that came first and was called that: first name or forename is a reasonably direct translation for praenomen. The complexity is that by the late republic praenomina were largely from such a small set of names that they were not particularly useful to distinguish anyone, and they became somewhat of a formality that would often be omitted. Julius Caesar has the 'group/last' name first because it doesn't include his first name at all: including it he would be Gaius Julius Caesar. The cognomen (there Caesar), meanwhile, was a bit of an inconsistent mess that in various times and contexts could be personal, hereditary, honorific, given, adopted... [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  Hereditary cognomina were used to distinguish different major branches of large, powerful clans. Some sort of device to specify which subbranch of an enormous group you're talking about appears to be necessary in every place that has such enormous groups; in imperial China, then as now, vast swathes of the population were covered by just a handful of surnames, but the practice developed of referring to notable families by a combination of their name and the location where they were dominant. So Caesar's close relatives were all also called Caesar, which is how it got to be an imperial title. You might think that with the original cognomen locked into place for such families, members would get a second cognomen so that there would be at least one part of their name that could identify them. But apparently not.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    They _sometimes_ did, I think. Here's one (non-Julian) example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Numidicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Num...
  - Tainnor 3y ago
    Some famous people got additional names, agnomina, such as "Africanus". And Roman emperors were later known for inflationary use of such designations. You could run a minor campaign on the Rhine and call yourself Germanicus for example. The whole part about the Roman naming system indicating heritage became even more complicated when Caracalla (properly named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) made every free man in the Empire a Roman citizen and now basically everyone was called "Marcus Aurelius" without ever having had any ties to the Aurelii family.
puszczyk 3y ago
In Poland informally it’s always <given name> <last name>. Formally, it depends most places are on the same as informal, but particularly military and some other bureaucracies will use <last name> <given name>. I always thought this is a holdout from the pre-computer days to make it easier to sort alphabetically (last names are a bit better distributed than the popular first names). In France they seem to prefer <LAST NAME> (yes, all caps) <First name> even for less formal things.
- zerocrates 3y ago
  I've seen the capitals convention to designate family names in several places, like with people from East Asian countries corresponding in English. The point is to take away ambiguity about which name order is being used and therefore how to address the writer.
- cafeinux 3y ago
  Not sure how it is done in other countries, but it's very likely that the custom of using the last name in all caps exists elsewhere. AFAIK, it comes from the fact that some last names are also common first names, so it's easier to distinguish between the two like this, as the order isn't really that important. For example, if I see a DIDIER Bernard or a Bernard DIDIER, I know I need to call him M. Didier in a formal context or just Bernard in an informal one.
- smcl 3y ago
  I've seen this in Czech too - sometimes lastname first but maybe more in old-school things. I think I'm registered with the Czech FA as "McSurname Sean" :-D Also this "reversal" had me confused when we hosted a French exchange student without knowing French (I spoke German, but the teachers knew my family were happy to host if they needed). His name was written like "KHALID Mohamed" and he was very polite so he didn't really correct me when I was calling him "Khalid", and since I was unfamiliar with Algerian names I had experience to suggest "Khalid" was more surname-y than firstname-y. It sorted itself out after a day or two though :-)
Archelaos 3y ago
> It's probably a Roman thing. There is very likely no connection. The introduction of surnames in Germany took place in the 15th century (somewhat earlier in German speaking parts of Switzerland). In Franconia, the "ethnic" distinct northern part of which is today Bavaria and which was never a part of the Roman empire, the last-name first custom also occurs in a few places such as Bamberg.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  The Romans weren't but Napoleon was, so maybe it is more of an indirect Roman influence?
throaway230831 3y ago
Gaius (also written Caius) was his given name, Ivlivs (Julius) the family name, Caesar the cognomen. In inscriptions (short): CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR In speaking he would (in English;)) rather formally introduce himself as "Gaius of the Iulii, called Caesar". His mother called him Gaius, his peers called him Caesar once he got or choose?) this name.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Wouldn't Ceasar be much closer to his last name,though? It's definitely not his personal nickname. His father was 'Gaius Julius Caesar' his grandfather (supposedly the first 'Ceasar') was 'Sextus Julius Caesar'. The Cognomen is presumable something that evolved as a way to tell apart people belonging to different branches of the same family/clan because the number of first names was very limited.
  - throaway230831 3y ago
    I stand corrected: in case of Caesar, it was already hereditary in his family. Initially, it was more of a nickname or even an earned name, like with Caesars contemporary Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognomen
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > Magnus Nicer than his other nickname 'adulescentulus carnifex ("teenage butcher") ' I guess.. But yeah, the cognomen seems weird/hard to understand e.g. Pompey's dad was called Strabo but he seems to have never used that name himself, while other like Ceasa, Metellus or Cicero were pretty much just surnames. Romans probably found their naming system as confusing as we do so they started using nicknames ad hoc. It was even more awful if you were a woman, you technically didn't even have your own name until the imperial period. You and your sisters would just be called Aemilia I, Aemilia II, III etc (or the 'elder'/'younger'). if your father was belonged to the Aemilius clan for example...
darkwater 3y ago
> In Italy we also used to list last-name first, particularly in official and military communications. This has changed significantly in the last 40 years, particularly in everyday bureaucracy, but it's still used by police and other bodies. Only that... it didn't? The vast majority of bureaucracy and even many private entities in Italy use and strongly prefer the "Surname Birthname" format.

rob74 3y ago

In Hungary it's also last name first, both officially and informally - not sure if it's some Asian influence or something else...

hinata08 3y ago
France as well I believe that it's mostly the English speaking world that is strict with having "first name" first and "last name" last. It's not an Asian cultural feature to have family name first, but it's an English speaking thing to have it last. OP isn't trying to use his software in Asia specifically. He's just adapting to non US market.
- jimktrains2 3y ago
  In the English-speaking world (or at least in the USA) we sort by last name, so any list of names you get is always last, first. For that reason many forms (though not all) will have the last name as the first thing you fill in.
- retrac 3y ago
  French uses the same convention as English. First then last. No one would ever say, or write, "Macron Emmanuel est le président de la France". In languages like Japanese or Hungarian, that's what family name first means.
  - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
    If you were writing a letter to him, though, you might put his name on the envelope as MACRON Emmanuel.

FearNotDaniel 3y ago

Agreed. Currently consulting for an org which is having this very debate; the consensus is leaning towards replacing FirstName/LastName with FullName (i.e how are you generally identified) and PreferredName (how do you like to be addressed). Some additional observations from the German-speaking world (both Vienna and rural Austria): - yes, we also often refer to people, even in everyday speech, as LastName FirstName - often when referring to someone by name they are also given a definite article (equivalent of English "the"), e.g. "die Maria" or "der Gruber Hansi" - some people I've encountered with a background in the German aristocracy (not Austrian, where such titles are technically abolished) have extremely long legal names with multiple prince/duke/von X und Y etc clauses. This will be their full legal name that appears in the passport and must be used when booking flights etc, but is not what they would use as "full name" in an everyday business context. So "Full Name" might not always be "Legal Name". Also in a South Asian/Indian diaspora context, it is very common for people to be addressed by a semi-formal nickname that does not appear anywhere in their legal name. Come to think of it, I know one or two Austrian aristos* who use the same approach. * yes, technically the aristocracy is abolished but they still live in their castles and know each other's pedigrees...

vidanay 3y ago
Boris Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz

usrusr 3y ago

Germany used to be extremely restrictive about the set of character sequences that were allowed as given names. Some of that is probably still in place. When everybody was called Fritz or Hans or Gundula plus some word describing an ancestor's profession (it's all following the pattern of Smith and Miller), the order didn't really matter and that freedom was liberally abused: contexts that use the formal as identifier (Schmidt, Müller) and the given name only as a tie-breaker on collision will happily put the family name first, despite the reverse being specified in the terms themselves (Vorname and Nachname translate to pre, post, they really don't leave anything open to interpretation). But those informal regional order conventions? I read them as formalized disrespect for the individual: "you're not Hans who happens to be a Müller, you're a Müller who happens to be Hans. And the Müllers, they are part of us, so subsume!" Those regional things can be quite peculiar: a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her family took over, at some point between the thirty years war and the industrial revolution.

Akronymus 3y ago
> a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. I disambiguate my grandparents via the name of the farmhouse they live in, rather than the last names. I am from austria. But I dunno how common that is.
morkalork 3y ago
>sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her That has a very "part of the crew, part of the ship" feeling to it. Work the land, become the land, you're named for the land that you work! With marital status, who your father was, your family's occupation, and where you're working, all in a name, résumés needn't be a thing.
weinzierl 3y ago
When I was a child in Bavaria I was often called by house name + given name, in that order, especially by the elderly. The house name is different from the family name which appears in official documents like the birth certificate. Another difference between northern and southern Germany is the Münchner-Du and the Hamburger-Sie. In standard German we use the formal pronoun Sie with the last name in formal situations and the informal pronoun Du with the given name in informal situations. Nowadays in semi-formal situations, like between colleagues at work, it's completely informal but two or three decades ago it wasn't. Officially the workplace was supposed to be formal and often it was, but in many cases a mixture between formal and informal forms was common. In the north people tended to use the formal Sie but in conjunction with the given name, like Markus, können sie bitte das Auto holen." (Marcus, can thee get the car, please.), whereas in Bavaria the opposite combination of informal Du combined with the family name was prevalent, like *"Du, Frau Müller, kannst Du bitte das Auto holen." (You, Mrs. Miller, can you get the car please.)

zamalek 3y ago

> "Just have a single "name field" and maybe preferred name, which is not the same." > This is the way to go. Agreed. Does anyone know of any reason to care about first/last, apart from it being part of My First SQL Database and sating our inner desire to create pointless taxonomies?

Akronymus 3y ago
Having to interact with other systems that expect first and last names to exist.
mastax 3y ago
Interfacing with external systems which require first/last, I suppose.
- streetnoodles 3y ago
  This, we recently had to break up our "name" field into first/last name because we work with banks that require first/last name as separate fields. When we reference an account it has to match their records exactly.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  This. Many US government agencies (and therefore their forms and APIs) use FML. So, our software has a whole pile of names... FML, preferred, mailing, formal, sort name, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. It's a mess.
ysavir 3y ago
Largely cultural, I think, and being able to use each as might be appropriate within the culture. For example, using "Hi, <first name>" when sounding casual, but using "Dear Ms <last name>" when trying to sound formal. Nothing that's likely to be mission-critical, but a natural inclination based on cultural upbringing that we may not even realize is affecting our product design.
rsynnott 3y ago
Sorting. Though I don't think there's a culture-agnostic way to do this, either.