Django name field: is it better to have the whole name in one field?

Question

Hello,

Is it better to have 3 fields in django model, "first", "initial" and "last" or is it better to have "name" and put first name, last name and initial in the "name" field? If I put all three in one "name" field can I still search for last names?

I am asking because it will be easier to extract the "first, initial, last" from the scraped item.

Thanks

Answer 1

It's better to store the data in it's original form =D

(or close to the form you got it in as you can)

That being said... why not do both?

Answer 2

If you want to query for (or sort by) last names, it's probably better to use three separate fields.

Answer 3

one day you will want to sort people by last name and will have to split merged names manually because with many people there will be numerous "formats"

I had to go through this once with ~300 records - lot's of fun copy-pasting. Sometimes you won't even know which name is first and which is last.

So you'll save yourself a lot of work in the future by keeping names separate.