Names are complicated, very personal, and vary a lot depending on the culture. In English-speaking North America we're actually spoiled that most people have names that follow a standard given-middle-family convention. And also that one's given name is the same in all contexts.<p>But not everyone's name follows the same format. My wife has two middle names, one of my friends has three middle names, his wife has two given names and a middle name, and my father-in-law goes by his middle name.<p>And this convention is not true everywhere. Wikipedia has a list of articles for how names work in various cultures:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Naming_convention" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Naming_convention</a><p>As an example, here's how it works in Russia (note the diminutive form, where the given name depends on the social status of the person they're addressing):<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_personal_name" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_personal_name</a><p>Of course, in lots of parts of the world, especially east Asia (e.g. China, Korea) it's common to put the family name first.<p>In general, the answer to "What is your name?" is "Who's asking and why?". If you need a person's name, you should ask for it in one of three ways:<p>1) What is your full, legal name? (e.g. Jonathan Anthony Smith Jr.)<p>2) What should we normally call you? (e.g. Jon, Mr. Smith, Johnny, Tony, Junior)<p>3) What name should we use when billing your credit card? (e.g. Jonathan A. Smith)<p>You should only ask the ones you need (don't need a full name? don't ask), and they should all of these should be free form with generous length limits and accept any Unicode text.