Come to think of it, why do first/middle/last names need separate fields in a database, in terms of bookkeeping?
Why do I absolutely need to be filed as [Ms] [Evil] [Z.] [Ombie]? Wouldn't [Ms Evil Z. Ombie] do?
I don't even see how a family name relates you to your own parents when it's very likely there may be a few thousands, even millions of people with your last name, and even with your own combination of two or three names.
Does it make any difference when someone is searching for you if they do a search for [Mr] [John] [Smith], rather than a [Mr John Smith]? It's only a combination of name and address that can (at best hope) to disambiguate two people with the exact same name and there's no reason to try and do that in a field-by-field manner. If you can match one string without spaces you can match n strings with n-1 spaces right?
In fact why do we absolutely need more than one line for a full address? That just causes more problems than it solves, doesn't it?
A while ago I asked my GP to change my title of address from "Mr" to "Ms". It turns out whatever system the NHS (or possibly just my GP's surgery) uses to keep their records absolutely didn't expect that and has no provision to handle it.
I bet it's perfectly possible to change from "Ms" to "Mrs" or even from "Mr" to "Fr" or "Dr" but try to go from "Mr" to "Ms" and the whole thing HCFs. So there's now two records for me in the NHS database one for a "Mr" me and one for a "Ms" me.
It's confusing for medical peeps who need to access my records and could potentially lead to some humiliation for me (though usually people tend to assume there's some error in the system and don't pry any further).
I've done the same thing with my bank and there was no trouble at all. It's just the NHS so far.
On the plus side if I could spawn a few such doppelganger records I might even get some protection against people gathering "metadata" on myself.
Why do I absolutely need to be filed as [Ms] [Evil] [Z.] [Ombie]? Wouldn't [Ms Evil Z. Ombie] do?
I don't even see how a family name relates you to your own parents when it's very likely there may be a few thousands, even millions of people with your last name, and even with your own combination of two or three names.
Does it make any difference when someone is searching for you if they do a search for [Mr] [John] [Smith], rather than a [Mr John Smith]? It's only a combination of name and address that can (at best hope) to disambiguate two people with the exact same name and there's no reason to try and do that in a field-by-field manner. If you can match one string without spaces you can match n strings with n-1 spaces right?
In fact why do we absolutely need more than one line for a full address? That just causes more problems than it solves, doesn't it?