>because the last names may not be in order. i'm not using an index at this point to select against. and if the user wants names that being with T, then they will come up in the order of Teamster, Thankson, Thompson, Tikiwater, etc etc....

Then use ORDER BY not GROUP BY. Group by collects all the same last names into one record. If all are unique, it works okay; if not, then George Jones information could be intermingled with Sam Jones.