Regex to validate names

Question

I would like to create a regex which validates a name of a person. These should be allowed:

• Letters (uppercase and lowercase)
• -

Answer 1

The short answer is no, there is no easy way. You have touched on the biggest issue. There are so many special cases of accents and extra things hanging of letters that it will become a mess to deal with. Additionally, the expression with break down to something like this

^[CAPITAL_LETERS][ALL_LETERS_AND_SYMBOLS]*$

That is not that helpful because "Abcd" fits that and you have no way to know if someone is incorrectly entering info into the field or if it was a crazy Hollywood parent that actually named their kid that or something like Sandwich or Umbrella.