Is normalizing a person's name going too far?

Question

You usually normalize a database to avoid data redundancy. It\'s easy to see in a table full of names that there is plenty of redundancy. If your goal is to create a catalog

Answer 1

No, but you might want to normalise to a canonical record for a customer (so you don't get 5 different entries for 'Bloggs & Co.' in your database. This is a data cleansing issue that often bites on MIS projects.