On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Gauthier, Dave <dave.gauthier@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I have a table with a column called "last_name". I have one customer who > likes to articulate queries and updates for this using column name > "last_name" (no problem there) but another who likes to call it "lname" and > yet another who likes to call it "surname". So 3 different names for the > same physical column in the table. Here's an out-of-the-box suggestion. Drop the column altogether and have a single column "name". Trying to divide names up never works properly. Does "surname" mean family name? Not all cultures put the family name last. Is "last_name" simply the part of the name after the last space? Save yourself a whole lot of trouble and just store names in single fields. And you dodge the field naming issue at the same time! ChrisA -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general