[deathanatos]

I've in the past written stuff that generated an index of names; this was sorted. While you can certainly sort on a free-form text field, the culture here is that name indexes are generally sorted by family name. So, to do that, you have to have some understanding of what the family name is, which a free-form text field does not give you.

But a lot of software has no need for the breakdown, and would be better served by a free-form field.

[vidarh]

Then at least be upfront with the user about why you're asking, because they might well answer differently (e.g. include a different number of parts of their last name) if they know your purpose is to sort the name than if they think it's being used for a different purpose. They might even give totally different names.

That's the most important part of the comment above: The concept of a name is so overloaded that unless you ask about the string to use for the specific purposes you intend to use it, then there is very little you can do with it.