Removal of Surnames

[Rhianu]

But if surnames got removed now, there will be a good number of people that'll have to change their names.

If surnames were simply made optional, there would be no naming conflicts with existing characters because their names would already be decided. But for new characters created from this point onward, people would have a choice for whether to use a surname or not.

"optional" labeling is one of the major sources of confusion in any kind of form.

Says who? They could just change the text field during character creation to look like this:

Given name: [________________]
Surname (optional): [________________]

I don't see what's so confusing about that.

I actually find funny that some people are complaining about something this absolutely minor (and that simply cannot be changed) and feeding an obvious troll. Surnames won't go away for very simple practical reasons, so this discussion is pointless.

What makes you think it can't be changed? Do you work as a programmer for SE? Did you look at their source code?