Quoting EnryWiki:

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Quoting RHo:

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As long as the last name is put completely into the last name field no matter of how many words it is composed, I can support this.

That's better. But, how do you find out what part is the "last name"?

It's the bit after the last space. 

Quoting pauls42:

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(...) The first name is (amazingly) the first word, the last name is (amazingly) the last word. And everything else is in the middle.

This shows no cultural bias and has the advantage of never needing to be discussed.(...)

This may not show any cultural bias, but it would be against the current rules.

Quoting RHo:

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Quoting pauls42:

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(...) The first name is (amazingly) the first word, the last name is (amazingly) the last word. And everything else is in the middle.

This shows no cultural bias and has the advantage of never needing to be discussed.(...)

This may not show any cultural bias, but it would be against the current rules.

Since the current Rules do not tell us how to parse names (except for a few instances such as prefixes, suffixes, nicknames and stage names) how would this be against the current Rules.

Quoting pauls42:

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The first name is (amazingly) the first word, the last name is (amazingly) the last word.

It doesn't work that way in real life, though. There is plenty of double "last names" and composite "first names".
I think users will enter data according to "first name" and "last name" in real life, not according to any rule we make up here. 

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And everything else is in the middle.

This shows no cultural bias

The cultural bias lies in the very fact of asking for a "Middle Name" of people who don't have it, just because other countries do use a "Middle Name". 

I've never understood this obsession over middle names and needing to parse them according to rules.
Simply type in the name the way you feel makes the most sense, and if it's wrong someone else will come along and correct it.
We can't be expected to know how to parse every single person's name in Profiler, we can only do what we feel is right. If someone else comes along later and says "actually, so-and-so's name is really parsed this way..." - no problem!

Quoting northbloke:

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I've never understood this obsession over middle names and needing to parse them according to rules.
Simply type in the name the way you feel makes the most sense, and if it's wrong someone else will come along and correct it.
We can't be expected to know how to parse every single person's name in Profiler, we can only do what we feel is right. If someone else comes along later and says "actually, so-and-so's name is really parsed this way..." - no problem!

Darnit, Northbloke, you know quite well that we don't allow logic on this forum!

Quoting hal9g:

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Quoting RHo:

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Quoting hal9g:

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Quoting RHo:

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Quoting pauls42:

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(...) The first name is (amazingly) the first word, the last name is (amazingly) the last word. And everything else is in the middle.

This shows no cultural bias and has the advantage of never needing to be discussed.(...)

This may not show any cultural bias, but it would be against the current rules.

Since the current Rules do not tell us how to parse names (except for a few instances such as prefixes, suffixes, nicknames and stage names) how would this be against the current Rules.

You have named part of it already. There is some stuff about name parsing in the rules. And it's nothing about word counting.

Quite frankly, the exceptions are already called out in the Rules.  This discussion is, IMO, about the more common three or four word names that people struggle to parse.  There is no guidance in the Rules for those, therefore, any method would not be "against the Rules".

pauls42's statement was quite clear and as such his method would be against the rules. Some people want to give the impression, that looking close enough at the credits would enable the user to enter them into the database completely mechanical without using some logic, common knowledge (sometimes even third party knowledge), common sense, and sometimes some research. But this is not the case with the current rules. They do demand to apply rules beyond counting words. And I can't see why recognising the correct last name of a person is so much more complex than applying those already existing rules.

Quoting RHo:

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And I can't see why recognising the correct last name of a person is so much more complex than applying those already existing rules.

If you were to honestly evaluate all of the "common name" arguments in these forums, it seems to me that it would be very easy to see why it is more complex to figure out last names than it is to recognize Mr., Mrs., Sir, Jr., Sr., Dr., von/del/de/di as part of a last name and the rest of the things that are clearly defined in the current Rules.

But then admitting that would defeat your argument.