The field is for first names. It then looks up the middle initial and last name from a SQL database. This works great most the time, but if you hit enter after selecting the first name from the dropdown, it causes a second empty field to be added to the template. This seems to be affecting the population of the rest of the data and causing some middle initials to incorrectly populate, etc. The SQL table looks fine, it all seems related to the fact that the field has a second (empty) name value when you hit enter. It's hard to explain what I'm seeing, but I am wondering if the only way to correct is to manually remove the second empty name field from all documents then try to delete. 

That sounds like expected behavior for multi-value fields. When you pick a value for the first name, a second text is added to that field to make it easier for the user to add multiple values. The empty value is not saved in the repository.