[thr0waway1239]

I agree with everything you are saying, but you ended your comment with "what should we call you in context X?". "What should we call you in context X" is, at least in the context of the current discussion, the same as a non-nullable string for the name field. Or am I misunderstanding your comment?

To add to my previous comment, what if two or more people from the same address are signed up for your service? How would you help them distinguish between the correspondence each one gets from your company?

[vidarh]

I'm saying that you need to be more specific. Just asking for name and having a non-nullable field for it runs straight into this problem, because the user will not know whether you are asking for their legal name, what they want to be called on the site, or what they want you to put an address label when physically mailing them, all three of which may be different.

> To add to my previous comment, what if two or more people from the same address are signed up for your service? How would you help them distinguish between the correspondence each one gets from your company?

By asking "what should we call you when mailing you?" (if you insist on a name field) or "which address (including name) should we use when mailing you?" You could then if you wish pre-populate any variation of name you might have on file for them in those fields; the point is that the more you focus on gathering the specific information you need for that specific context, the fewer wrong assumptions you will be making about what the user would actually prefer.