This is actually a significant problem for running BuddyPress with MemberPress, because MemberPress (and I’m guessing a lot of ecommerce plugins) require a First Name and Last Name for checkout. I don’t understand why BuddyPress doesn’t just update WP’s “Display name publicly as” field and leave alone the first/last fields. It seems very common in a social network for individuals to want to use a handle rather than their full name.
