While it is arguably necessary that whenever you have a name field in a system, then there will be a "name change transaction", great care must be taken in deciding what to do about a name change.

In most cases the need to change a name will arise because a new transaction about the same person or company or product has been encountered. Another case is when the person has changed their name as a result of marriage, divorce, preference or simply discovered that he has it "wrong".

Usually removing the "old name" from the system is a bad idea; simply keep it as a known alias. References from "old documents" are very likely to create searches about "old names". Every name you encounter about a person, place or product is clearly evidence that rightly or wrongly that name is in use or has been in use in the real world about that same person. To maximize your ability to find or match this entity in the future, the strongest way to deal with name changes is to add an additional name to the index for the same entity. For business reasons it may be necessary to identify one name field as the preferred, current or registered name.