T-SQL substring - separating first and last name

Question

I have a column which has FirstName and LastName together. I\'m writing a report to separate the FirstName And LastName. How do I get the FirstName and LastName separated in

Answer 1

The code below works with Last, First M name strings. Substitute "Name" with your name string column name. Since you have a period as a final character when there is a middle initial, you would replace the 2's with 3's in each of the lines (2, 6, and 8)- and change "RIGHT(Name, 1)" to "RIGHT(Name, 2)" in line 8.

SELECT  SUBSTRING(Name, 1, CHARINDEX(',', Name) - 1) LastName ,
CASE WHEN LEFT(RIGHT(Name, 2), 1) <> ' '
     THEN LTRIM(SUBSTRING(Name, CHARINDEX(',', Name) + 1, 99))
     ELSE LEFT(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(Name, CHARINDEX(',', Name) + 1, 99)),
               LEN(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(Name, CHARINDEX(',', Name) + 1, 99)))
               - 2)
END FirstName ,
CASE WHEN LEFT(RIGHT(Name, 2), 1) = ' ' THEN RIGHT(Name, 1)
     ELSE NULL
END MiddleName