A person’s identity is composed of many components. It originates with one’s parents at birth and develops unto death and beyond.
What is your Name?
This is question #1 and more difficult to answer than you might think.
You will encounter problems with aliases, middle names, nick names, and generational designators. You will have to deal with maiden names, and name changes, legal or otherwise. You must also actively look for alternate names while conducting your research.
Different spelling variations of the name may all be pronounced the same. You may have to do some research to find the variations using the Penguin Dictionary of Names and other sources that specialize in names originating in different countries.
Evaluate likely search results by looking at how common the name is. In the USA the census data is used to generate a list of surnames in order of popularity. No such list could be found for Canada.
Names in in Arabic, Urdu, and many other languages should be written in the native script by the subject. You may find that his name translates into something different than what he is telling you it is in English.
On the other hand, a name could tell you also a lot about the background of a person, possibly his father or parents, the clan or religious group he comes from and so on. Very culture depended so some preparation could be usefull