If you want to really do it right, so it works for everyone, this is the only way.
However, when I actually did it this way, it caused problems as soon as we partnered with another company and had to communicate with a system designed in a less-progressive manner. (I.e., about 99.5% of existing systems.) We couldn’t generate an export for that partner without first and last name fields, and we had no way to reliably generate those from the full name field.
So, ironically, if we had let the user decide how to compromise the integrity of their name up front, we would have had a better user experience than after our computer started butchering it for them.
However, when I actually did it this way, it caused problems as soon as we partnered with another company and had to communicate with a system designed in a less-progressive manner. (I.e., about 99.5% of existing systems.) We couldn’t generate an export for that partner without first and last name fields, and we had no way to reliably generate those from the full name field.
So, ironically, if we had let the user decide how to compromise the integrity of their name up front, we would have had a better user experience than after our computer started butchering it for them.
I guess we just can’t have nice things.