>>I think you meant second + first (as in Nedeljkovic + Dragan?)? If so, I agree.
>
>There's a general lack of consensus of what is "name" and what is "other name", and which is the person's name and which is the family name. AFAIK, the family-name-first is usual in Chinese and Hungarian languages only (though I have heard this list is somewhat wrong - would like to be updated), while all others go the other way 'round - except in alphabetical listings. In this example "first" was meant as "the one you want to go first".

Yes, I thought that might apply. That's why I gave the example using your name to be sure.

>I like your approach, though it surely must have its limitations on what it can do while guessing a good default

Absolutely. I think my approach will work in 90% of the cases, but when it doesn't, the user can change it. This is an example of recognizing that just because we're using computers, the computer doesn't necessarily have to decide everything. Let it make its best guess, then allow the user slap it upside the head if it gets it wrong. :)

>The other approach, used in phone book only so far, was to supply a list of keywords to search by, and store them into a separate table, which has only the master table's FK and the keyword, indexed by keyword.

That sounds great!