Is normalizing a person's name going too far?

Question

You usually normalize a database to avoid data redundancy. It\'s easy to see in a table full of names that there is plenty of redundancy. If your goal is to create a catalog

Answer 1

You should normalize it out if you need to avoid the delete anomaly that comes with not breaking it out. That is, if you ever need to answer the question, has my database ever had a person named "Joejimbobjake" in it, you need to avoid the anomaly. Soft deletes is probably a much better way than having a comprehensive first name table (for example), but you get my point.

Answer 2

Database normalization usually refers to normalizing the field, not its content. In other words, you would normalize that there only be one first name field in the database. That is generally worthwhile. However the data content should not be normalized, since it is individual to that person - you are not picking from a list, and you are not changing a list in one place to affect everybody - that would be a bug, not a feature.

Answer 3

I would say yes, it is going too far in 95%+ of the cases.

Answer 4

Maybe if you work in the Census office it might make sense. Otherwise, see every other answer :)

Answer 5

Generally yes. Normalizing to that level would be going to far. Depending on the queries (such as phone books where searches by last name are common) it might be worthwhile. I expect that to be rare.

Answer 6

If you had a need to perform queries based on diminutive names I could see a need for normalizing the names. e.g. a search for "Betty" may need to return results for "Betty", "Beth", and "Elizabeth"