Prevent users from entering honorifics (Mr. / Mrs. / Ms.) in the First Name field

Question

We have a high-throughput User Info intake form that get thousands of submissions everyday. The form, among other fields, has fields for First Name and Last Name. The form text is translated to the regions where we are getting the users from. However we still see folks entering Mr. Ms. Mrs Dr. etc instead of the First Name. And Full Name in the Last Name field.

We are adding field validation to prevent users from entering these honorifics in the Firstname field.

However I am wondering if there are other things that we can do to make it more clear to the end-users that they are supposed to enter their First Name and not honorifics.

p.s. We don't want to add a Title field, like some other sites do.

Answer 1

This is an unusual question since most people are trying to capture more and not less information, and I think it is useful because some names can be both male or female names and you need some other information to help you determine the gender (unless you already capture this information elsewhere).

I would say that using a field for honorifics is probably one of the best way to let people know not to put that information in other fields, but you can try other things like:

• using hint or help text above or below the first name input field
• using natural language in the forms so the users will provide a more informal response
• provide some explanation of why you don't need the information so people will understand