Photos for Mac: Why is it only showing the first name of a person in the People Album

When you assign a name for a person to add it to the People album, Photos will show suggestions with matching names, as you start typing. One of the suggested names may be from a contact card. It may have an email address below it, and if you select it, then only the First Name of the person may be shown in the name field below the faces circle on a photo or as the name of the person, even if you enter the full name.

You can pick each of the two names - but each choice has different drawback.

• If you enter the full name and do not click the Contact card, the full name will be shown on the face, but you cannot ask Siri to show you photos of the person. "Hey Siri, Show me photos of my father" will not work, because Siri cannot not know which photos are showing your father. That is inconvenient.
• If you select the suggested name from the Contacts card, you can use Siri to search for this person, but we can no longer see the last name anywhere in Photos for some of the Contacts. Photos will shorten the name to the first name and does not display the full name, if it is the first person with first name that we add to the People album. If you first add your contact "Harry Potter" to the People album and then "Harry Truman", Harry Potter will only be shown with the first name, but the second Harry with the full name.

I avoid using the Contact Card like the plague. The way the contacts are handled in Photos is either a bug or an ill-considered feature, broken by design. When I use a contact card, I cannot use the People album to look up the full names of people. And worse, I cannot use Photos at work or to show photos to casual acquaintances. It can be highly embarrassing, if we accidentally show photos of persons, that we are not on first-name basis with to other people.

This user tip was generated from the following discussion: Multiple names for same person