Why do most register forms have "First name" & "Last name" why not "Full Name" ?

[TeddyKiller]

Sorry if this is wrong thread.

It should be straight forward as to what I'm asking.

 

Why do most register forms use "First name" and "Last name"

Wouldn't "Full Name" be just as good?

[ignace]

The reason for this is to make sure they fill in both their first- and lastname and not just their firstname. It all depends on your business requirements if first- and last name is important for your requirements than it's best to ask them separatly

[Philip]

The reason for this is to make sure they fill in both their first- and lastname and not just their firstname. It all depends on your business requirements if first- and last name is important for your requirements than it's best to ask them separatly

 

To expand on this, let's say my name is Joe Bobbleman. If a company wants to address me informally in an email they could be like "Hey Joe look what we have for you!", but of they wanted to be formal "Dear Mr. Bobbleman,"Of course emails aren't the only place this can happen, you can use your imagination

[ignace]

The reason for this is to make sure they fill in both their first- and lastname and not just their firstname. It all depends on your business requirements if first- and last name is important for your requirements than it's best to ask them separatly

 

To expand on this, let's say my name is Joe Bobbleman. If a company wants to address me informally in an email they could be like "Hey Joe look what we have for you!", but of they wanted to be formal "Dear Mr. Bobbleman,"Of course emails aren't the only place this can happen, you can use your imagination

 

Actually they would be able to do that in both cases ofcourse in the case of fullname you would need to add some more function calls to your query and you never know if they user gave a lastname in the first place but possible never the less

[Philip]

Perhaps so, But what if someone had a name of "Johnny Doodle Master" with 2 last names? or 2 first names? What would it do

[ignace]

It would say:

 

Mr. Doodle Master

[isedeasy]

It would say:

 

Mr. Doodle Master

 

That would be wrong because his first name is "Johnny Doodle" and his surname is "Master"; at-least it could be.

 

How do you know where to split the string?

[ignace]

Do you know anyone who has 2 first names?

[isedeasy]

Do you know anyone who has 2 first names?

 

Not personally but people do.

[TeddyKiller]

I have a double barrel name.

It's rather annoying because some websites put an hyphen as an illegal character.

 

So.. I have to write in Jean Luc for a first name. Sometimes spaces can't be used too. So it comes out as Jeanluc.

So.. I guess in some cases I have 2 first names?

[Mchl]

Do you know anyone who has 2 first names?

 

I have two (three if counting one I got on confirmation).

 

Also remember that different cultures have different customs as to whether first name should be written before or after last name. Japanese for example write their last name before first.

[Daniel0]

Do you know anyone who has 2 first names?

 

I've known several people who do.

[ignace]

Japanese for example write their last name before first.

 

I think many countries do (formal) for example in Belgium you write the lastname followed by their firstname

[SchweppesAle]

Always assumed this has something to do with database design. 

 

Generally speaking you want each attribute(column) to represent atomic values so it'll be easier to query and find relevant data. 

 

Ex: Finding everyone with the first name "Bill" but not "Clinton", etc.

 

[AshleyUk]

As stated, there is no reason why they have two text field's instead of the one apart from it make's it easier that running a validation on the one field to check if they have entered two or more word's however this can get complicated with different name's and Language's, where have a seperate Input for each part of the name only requires minimal validation, and secuirty checks.

[fantomel]

he is putting that question because he is french and prob his name is something like jean luc "marosie" luc and marosie should go on the same row not on different rows. if the website you are building is strictly for france then go by the rules there(but it will affect the others) or go with standard ones.. First Name, Last Name and maybe include Middle Name or something like that.

[TeddyKiller]

I'm not french, just have a partially french name. I often use seperate fields, just wanted to know some explanations for it

Thanks guys for all the input.

[zeodragonzord]

In many cases, these names will get imported into programs such as MS Outlook, which will separate First and Last Name.  When you import these names, the required format will have the names separated.

 

In other cases, you might want to generate usernames based on the name: Cloud Strife will be cstrife1.  It's not always correct to have regular expressions separate the names out because in the end, it's still a best guess.

If you separate the fields, it's the user's responsibility to get their name correctly.  If you take in full name and guess which name is first and last, that will be your responsibility.  It's better to have the user to take on that responsibility; they're used to it anyway.  There's a cultural difference in how we write names.  In the US, we write FirstName LastName.  In some other countries, they write LastName Firstname.

[fantomel]

In many cases, these names will get imported into programs such as MS Outlook, which will separate First and Last Name.  When you import these names, the required format will have the names separated.

 

In other cases, you might want to generate usernames based on the name: Cloud Strife will be cstrife1.  It's not always correct to have regular expressions separate the names out because in the end, it's still a best guess.

If you separate the fields, it's the user's responsibility to get their name correctly.  If you take in full name and guess which name is first and last, that will be your responsibility.  It's better to have the user to take on that responsibility; they're used to it anyway.  There's a cultural difference in how we write names.  In the US, we write FirstName LastName.  In some other countries, they write LastName Firstname.

 

yeah it depends a lot when you talk about region and sometimes is good to think about what public will enter that website from what countrys stuff like that.. or aim for one region.. etc. best choice is to use international stuff

[Tohou]

Sorry for posting in an old topic, I think the issue here is with crappy developers being too lazy to actually use PHP in a way that makes it less work for the end-user, but even sites like Facebook do the same thing, it's mostly because of what they're use to, I can understand Facebook because they do a lot of things socially with last names and it would save time(less code written) in their future apps.

But if you use a code like this it doesn't matter:

 

<?php
//Say Tohno Robert William Shefford is posted
$name = (isset($_POST['name'])) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['name'], ENT_QUOTES) : NULL;
if ($name != NULL) {
$data = explode(" ", $name);
//Getting numbers of array pieces
$rows = count($data,0) - 1;
$lname = $data[$rows]; // This means it grabs the last portion.
echo 'Hello, Mr.' . $lname;
}
else echo 'No name given';
?>

Returns: "Hello, Mr.Shefford"

[Mchl]

How do you know last portion is the correct portion to use?

 

What if this guy entered his (full) name?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

[Tohou]

Good question, logic thrown out by Bill Gates again!

[Mchl]

Not only by him but also, as it was pointed out before, by Japanese.

[Tohou]

Not only by him but also, as it was pointed out before, by Japanese.

Well Japanese is actually easier (I have learn-japanese manuals), the manual I have lists all known last names in Japan, or ones most commonly used, some how you can parse through a database to see which names match it.

But that's a whole lot more to do then just adding another column to your db. So it's possible, just not logical, reliable and makes more db requests than needed lol