This is the only place I’ve seen the confusing option of using the “full name” field or the first and last name fields. Not sure which one I should be using and what the difference is.
I searched for other discussion on this via ActiveCampaign blog and feedback area but didn’t see anything. Would love to hear this explained!
Hi Joe —
The “Full name” field is automatically parsed into First and Last name fields when the form is submitted. It is more of an automated convenience than it is a difference in how the information is stored on the contact record.
If a contact submits the “full name” field:
Joe Smith
… when it is stored in our database it will be as:
First: Joe
Last: Smith
Also, if a contact were just to submit:
Joe
… that would be stored as their “first name” so you can use the “full name” interchangeably with “first name,” on the form builder, if you want.
Let me know if that helps clarify things for you.
Great, thanks for the specific explanation. I can’t remember at the moment but I ran into a situation recently where the data wasn’t coming through correctly after they filled out the full name field. They might have used “Dr. John M Smith” or something like that. Will have to dig up the specific example to follow up.
Interesting. Yeah, let me know what the situation was.
I’d imagine that wouldn’t parse correctly so maybe, if that becomes common problem, you’d have to use the separate first and last fields. Or, you could give very specific instructions but that probably won’t look nice and would probably be ignored a lot of the time.
Being a developer its 10x better to have both firstname & lastname fields, as it causes so much trouble trying to separate these values from just fullname value. As the person could have a double-barrelled surname, eg: Smith-Jones. Therefore do we separate the values on the capital letter or the hyphen (dash)? Some people put in their middle names too, I’ve even had a middle name & a double-barrelled surname! eg: “Sharry Steven Smith-Williams”
I’m glad the fullname is automatically parsed for you 
Hi. Is it possible to change to the opposite?
In Hungary the names order are the opposite…
FULL NAME = Demeny Zoltan
First name = Zoltan
Last name = Demeny
There is somewhere a settings where I can change it?
This is even more complicated in Spanish speaking countries. There we have 2 last names (dad’s and mom’s, because women don’t lose their family name when they get married). We have also compounded first names, and in some cases compounded last names too. One example:
JOSE LUIS FERNANDO PEREZ DE PINEDA Y ALVAREZ DE CASTRO
How do you parse that? ))))
IMHO, makes sense to ignore that the fullname field exists, and just use the first and last name fields. A cool idea by AC, but other software doesn’t use that for the most part.
Also I see it as more of a confusion than a convenience!
I’d echo what others have said, but the one benefit I could see is as a shortcut to add the person’s full name as a personalization tag. My understanding is that when the names are entered separately, AC automatically concatenates firstname+lastname. Not hugely easier than using two personalization tags, but maybe there’s some use case for it out there.