[caseyohara]

I did this in the product where I work. We operate globally so having separate first and last name fields was making less sense. So I merged them into a singular full name field.

The first and only people to complain about that change were our product marketing team, because now they couldn’t “personalize” emails like `Hi <firstname>,`. I had the hardest time convincing them that while the concept of first and last names are common in the west, it is not a universal concept.

So as a compromise, we added a “Preferred Name” field where users can enter their first name or whatever name they prefer to be called. Still better than separate first and last name fields.

[cudder]

I tried this too, and a customer angrily asked why they can't sort their report alphabetically by last name. Sigh.

[caseyohara]

Just split the full name on the space char and take the last value as the last name. Oh wait, some people have multiple last names.

Split on the space and take everything after the first space as the last name. Oh wait, some people have multiple first names.

Merging names is a one-way door, you can't break them apart programmatically. Knowing this, I put a lot of thought into whether it was worth it to merge them.