Seems easy enough, right? They don't have one big field for [ANN BETH SMITH JONES] and then try to guess what name is forename or surname.
Some systems don't like hyphens, or don't like spaces, or appear to accept them but silently drop them kludging the two names in SMITHJONES.
Add the 'scunthorpe problem' and things get even more frustrating.
One of the Google feedback pages declined my feedback because my (legitimate, linked to my Googlemail account) email address and name contains "Cocks".
Google+ currently even chooses to disbelieve that a person's first and last names can be the same. Oddly, this wasn't the case a few years ago, since I managed to create an account with my real name, then. Trying to consolidate all my accounts under one failed recently, though.
This doesn't work for people with suffixes very well, or with the "last name" not being at the end. Back when I was into genealogy a lot, about ten years ago, the "family name" was typically indicated by slashes. So in that format I am "Christopher Mark /Gore/". Your example would be "Ann Beth /Smith Jones/". It also works for people like "James Michael /Smith/ Jr." or "/Kim/ Jong-il" or "/Kim/ Il-Sung".
Seems easy enough, right? They don't have one big field for [ANN BETH SMITH JONES] and then try to guess what name is forename or surname.
Some systems don't like hyphens, or don't like spaces, or appear to accept them but silently drop them kludging the two names in SMITHJONES.
Add the 'scunthorpe problem' and things get even more frustrating.
One of the Google feedback pages declined my feedback because my (legitimate, linked to my Googlemail account) email address and name contains "Cocks".