BuddyPress.org

The name field was previously split into “First Name / Last Name” fields, but this is an issue for internationalization. In future versions it may be possible to apply rules to profile fields that will determine the content allowed.

That is such a silly argument. 90 percent of the civilized world uses firstname + lastname. Why make life difficult for the rest of us just because theoretically a few places in the world use only one name or three names or whatever? Why not let them hack a workaround it?

My issue with this is also not just about that field, but more about what it says about Buddypress’ priorities. If you want to register members in your company or sports club with name, address, phone number, etc. there is no easy way to do it, you’ll have to hack core files and later you’ll have to use custom functions to retrieve the data from several different tables in the database.

Also, BuddyPress will automatically synchronize profile fields with the WP profile fields. Check the function xprofile_sync_wp_profile()

No it doesn’t. Version 1.0 only added first name and last name to wp_usermeta if a user updated his account data after signup. You couldn’t count on the data to be there for every member. I had to write a custom function, based on xprofile_sync_wp_profile, to force that synchronization to happen upon registration.