Better to parse name values or combine

Question

I have two different tables, with the name values being stored in different manners...

For example one field is:

inventorName

John C. Smith

While in the other table the fields are:

Inventorfirst | InventorLast

John C. | Smith

The question is would it make more sense for me to combine the seperate names rather than spending god knows how long parsing out the individual names. I understand the drawbacks when it comes to querying :

Find and inventor with the last name Thomas could include first names of thomas within the fields, and on top of that the queries would mostly be using like and name which I am not a fan of cause I want it to be accurate as possible.

I am fairly new to this and all of the name parsing articles I ahve read make it seem like a nightmare and could just use some honest opinions.

Answer 1

Combine them.

So many people have four or more names, hyphenated names, suffixes and all variations of things won't fit into whatever separation you try to come up with. Also, it allows other entities to fit nicely in the field as well, say Xerox Parc (fitting your inventor example).

The world is used to Google-style searching now. If they type Thomas, it's not surprising to them to see everything with Thomas in it (and they even expect it).

Databases can handle LIKE searches just fine.

Don't break out names.