In many cases, it’s not OK to assume that someone even has a name, so allowing the entire field to be blank is still recommended.

• Fallacy 32: People’s names are assigned at birth.
• Fallacy 33: OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.
• Fallacy 34: Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.
• Fallacy 35: Five years?
• Fallacy 36: You’re kidding me, right?
• Fallacy 40: People have names.

An extension of this principle is that, if your application doesn’t really need the user’s name, then you should avoid dealing with names entirely.