The fact that he calls himself "John Carter" in no way negates the fact that Carter is his middle name.  Lots of people use their first and middle names together to refer to themselves.  That doesn't make their middle name suddenly part of their first name, or as some have referred to it, a "double first name".

I have an aunt named "Jean Ann".  Nobody calls her anything but Jean Ann, but her middle name is still "Ann".

John/Carter/Cash

Quoting Alien Redrum:

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Why can't there be one field for name again?

(I'm curious on the software aspect of it, this back and forth would be completely gone if there were just one field as thousands of others have pointed out (no doubt) before me).

I believe the main argument against a single name field is that you will no longer be able to display actors by the format "lastname, firstname, middlename".  This is one of the options currently available.

Hardly seems worth it for all the trouble that three separate fields causes.

Quoting hal9g:

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Quoting Alien Redrum:

Quote:
Why can't there be one field for name again?

(I'm curious on the software aspect of it, this back and forth would be completely gone if there were just one field as thousands of others have pointed out (no doubt) before me).

I believe the main argument against a single name field is that you will no longer be able to display actors by the format "lastname, firstname, middlename".  This is one of the options currently available.

Aaah! Makes sense, thanks!

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Hardly seems worth it for all the trouble that three separate fields causes.

And that makes even more sense.   

Quoting RHo:

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Quoting T!M:

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Quoting RHo:

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Luckily there is no default parsing. Otherwise we would be counting words which doesn't make any sense when parsing a name into fields which have their own meaning.

That would make sense, if we actually did that. But no, we don't do that either. Asian names, anyone?

Of course we do. For Asian names as well we put those names into the fields with the appropriate meaning, for example last names into the last name field.

Maybe you do that, but I can assure you that lots of people don't.

Quoting Alien Redrum:

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Why can't there be one field for name again?

With only one field, you cannot sort on name. Lists of actors, that we can easily get with tools (as simple statistics plugin), would not have anymore any utility. Note that a sort field for names, that had been suggested in the past, would have no effect as you still would have to parse correctly to get the family name. Note that those lists by name is the main tool that we have to find variants of same actors and correct data to get proper linking.

Quoting VirusPil:

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So once you entered a person in one way all the next downloads will change to your local variant. Imho not the worst way to handle it.
A con: If you upload a profile, your variant gets into the online database.

And it's that, exactly (bolded by me) which makes it the worst way to handle it, IMHO. Such inadvertent parsing changes - you didn't even touch it, yet it shows up as changed - often cause people to vote "no", stating "unexplained parsing change" as their reason, and I've often ended up having to change the parsing to be able to contribute without no-votes, and then fixing it right back. Somehow, I'm sure that's not the intended result of this behaviour.

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My idea: for online just one name field.

Quoting surfeur51:

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Quoting Alien Redrum:

Quote:
Why can't there be one field for name again?

With only one field, you cannot sort on name. Lists of actors, that we can easily get with tools (as simple statistics plugin), would not have anymore any utility. Note that a sort field for names, that had been suggested in the past, would have no effect as you still would have to parse correctly to get the family name. Note that those lists by name is the main tool that we have to find variants of same actors and correct data to get proper linking.

Aaah. Would probably take some finagling to make it work.

I really don't believe a 2 name field would help anything. I mean you still have to figure out if the name in the middle (positionally) belongs in the first or second. And there is just no way to know for sure where it belongs.

To prove the fact... I went to an online white pages directory... and I put what is known to be common first or middle names and searched it on last name only... and every one of them showed hundreds of results. Showing that you can't go by what a name is to know it's correct position. So if you have a 3 (or more) part name you really have no idea if it is a double first name, a middle name or a double last name.

I went to http://www.whitepages.com/ and I put in names such as...

- Pete
- Bob
- Jerry
- Sam
- Skip (36 results on this one)
- John
- Paul
- Jane
- Carol
- Mary
- Margaret
- Kelly

Many names that most people would assume to be first or middle names... and the site stopped counting/showing the results once it went over 100... which all of these did except where otherwise noted.

So with only 2 name fields it is still up in the air.

I personally truly believe as long as there is more then 1 name field we will never know for sure which fields to put the name(s) in the center of a name.