What is a reasonable length limit on person “Name” fields?

Question

I have a simple webform that will allow unauthenticated users to input their information, including name. I gave the name field a limit of 50 characters to coincide with my

Answer 1

@Ian Nelson: I'm wondering if others see the problem there.

Let's say you have split fields. That's 70 characters total, 35 for first name and 35 for last name. However, if you have one field, you neglect the space that separates first and last names, short changing you by 1 character. Sure, it's "only" one character, but that could make the difference between someone entering their full name and someone not. Therefore, I would change that suggestion to "35 characters for each of Given Name and Family Name, or 71 characters for a single field to hold the Full Name".

Answer 2

In the UK, there are a few government standards which deal successfully with the bulk of the UK population -- the Passport Office, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Deed Poll office, and the NHS. They use different standards, obviously.

Changing your name by Deed Poll allows 300 characters;

There is no legal limit on the length of your name, but we impose a limit of 300 characters (including spaces) for your full name.

The NHS uses 70 characters for patient names

PATIENT NAME
Format/length: max an70

The Passport Office allows 30+30 first/last and Driving Licenses (DVLA) is 30 total.

Note that other organisations will have their own restrictions about what they will show on the documents they produce — for HM Passport Office the limit is 30 characters each for your forename and your surname, and for the DVLA the limit is 30 characters in total for your full name.

Answer 3

depending on who is going to be using your database, for example African names will do with varchar(20) for last name and first name separated. however it is different from nation to nation but for the sake saving your database resources and memory, separate last name and first name fields and use varchar(30) think that will work.

Answer 4

Note that many cultures have 'second surnames' often called family names. For example, if you are dealing with Spanish people, they will appreciate having a family name separated from their 'surname'.

Best bet is to define a data type for the name components, use those for a data type for the surname and tweak depending on locale.

Answer 5

The average first name is about 6 letters. That leaves 43 for a last name. :) Seems like you could probably shorten it if you like.

The main question is how many rows do you think you will have? I don't think varchar(50) is going to kill you until you get several million rows.