Sorry to say, I've lost interest in trying to help you understand normalisation. Without knowing the context it is impossible to advise. We are already up to 24 posts and no further forward - I can see this going to 100+ posts, everyone still wandering around in a fog and still no solution.
As far as this description is concerned
Say there's groups of names and subjects. They're in a table and repeated many times. Should they be in their own table just once with an ID (key)?.
I would expect you would require three tables, not one - names, subjects and a linking table - each with their own PK (primary key). But who knows without context.
I've given you examples of normalisation, you can also look in wikipedia or look at a few templates or example database schema, takes a few minutes to grasp the basics - if you still don't understand then I suspect relational databases are not for you and you will constantly be on this forum trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. You might be better off with excel where each cell is independent.
As far as your form and not being able to update your query is concerned - you've been offered several workarounds and I don't think I can add to what has been suggested.
So good luck with your project, but I don't believe I can provide any more help