[Daimanta]

It's not a "middle name", rather it's an "infix". Some countries/languages have this feature where there is a generic "infix" part of the last/family name. This generic part if fully part of the last name but is so common that it will cause an imbalance in the distribution of names.

To understand this as an English speaker. Imagine people aren't called John Smith, but rather John the Smith and not Bill Boston but Bill of Boston. Now imagine that a large percentage of people had an infix in the name. It would be impractical to order stuff by last name and find a massive index on the letter "o" because all the last names starting with "of" or at "t" starting with "the". To balance this out, parts that would translate to words like "from", "the", "of", "to" or "on" would be considered an index. Part of the last name, but not considered part of the name index. John the Smith would be found at the letter "S" usually structured as "Smith, John the".

[stephenr]

Ah ok. So the issue is not so much how to store it, but how to sort it.

It's the iTunes "The ..." problem.

Thanks for clarifying.

[nomdep]

That sound like is the user’s fault: if their name is “Bill of Boston”, then their surname is “of Boston”… and if they prefer to be called “Mr. Boston” or similar, then they should omit the “the” when filling a form

[Hasnep]

If someone's family name is O'Neill and their name gets sorted to the top of the O section because if the apostrophe does that make it their fault? If they prefer to be sorted correctly they should omit the apostrophe from their name?