[lesserknowndan]

My thought is separate out into separate fields because you'll need to later split things apart anyway (like you provided in your example).

To me the bigger question is first/middle/last or given/middle/family.

I now lean back toward first/middle/last as it gives the user the ability to control how their name is represented as they can chose which name goes in first and which in last etc. This seems to best handle Asian name formats, which need to be taken into account because there are plenty of Asians in Western countries now.

[moomoo11]

Thank you, exactly. I know names are important, but I don't want to bikeshed on this for longer than I need to. I think I'll stick to my current method.

I'm glad I asked, and got some nice feedback that I can consider for later.