Simple way to parse a person's name into its component parts? [closed]

Answer 1

Understanding this is a bad idea, I wrote this regex in perl - here's what worked the best for me. I had already filtered out company names.
Output in vcard format: (hon_prefix, given_name, additional_name, family_name, hon. suffix)

/^ \s*
    (?:((?:Dr.)|(?:Mr.)|(?:Mr?s.)|(?:Miss)|(?:2nd\sLt.)|(?:Sen\.?))\s+)? # prefix
    ((?:\w+)|(?:\w\.)) # first name
(?: \s+ ((?:\w\.?)|(?:\w\w+)) )?  # middle initial
(?: \s+ ((?:[OD]['’]\s?)?[-\w]+))    # last name
(?: ,? \s+ ( (?:[JS]r\.?) | (?:Esq\.?) | (?: (?:M)|(?:Ph)|(?:Ed) \.?\s*D\.?) | 
         (?: R\.?N\.?) | (?: I+) )  )? # suffix
\s* $/x

notes:

• doesn't handle IV, V, VI
• Hard-coded lists of prefixes, suffixes. evolved from dataset of ~2K names
• Doesn't handle multiple suffixes (eg. MD, PhD)
• Designed for American names - will not work properly on romanized Japanese names or other naming systems

Answer 2

There is no simple solution for this. Name construction varies from culture to culture, and even in the English-speaking world there's prefixes and suffixes that aren't necessarily part of the name.

A basic approach is to look for honorifics at the beginning of the string (e.g., "Hon. John Doe") and numbers or some other strings at the end (e.g., "John Doe IV", "John Doe Jr."), but really all you can do is apply a set of heuristics and hope for the best.

It might be useful to find a list of unprocessed names and test your algorithm against it. I don't know that there's anything prepackaged out there, though.

Answer 3

I know this is old and might be answers somewhere I couldn't find already, but since I couldn't find anything that works for me, this is what I came up with which I think works a lot like Google Contacts and Microsoft Outlook. It doesn't handle edge cases well, but for a good CRM type app, the user can always be asked to resolve those (in my app I actually have separate fields all the time, but I need this for data import from another app that only has one field):

    public static void ParseName(this string s, out string prefix, out string first, out string middle, out string last, out string suffix)
    {
        prefix = "";
        first = "";
        middle = "";
        last = "";
        suffix = "";

        // Split on period, commas or spaces, but don't remove from results.
        List<string> parts = Regex.Split(s, @"(?<=[., ])").ToList();

        // Remove any empty parts
        for (int x = parts.Count - 1; x >= 0; x--)
            if (parts[x].Trim() == "")
                parts.RemoveAt(x);

        if (parts.Count > 0)
        {
            // Might want to add more to this list
            string[] prefixes = { "mr", "mrs", "ms", "dr", "miss", "sir", "madam", "mayor", "president" };

            // If first part is a prefix, set prefix and remove part
            string normalizedPart = parts.First().Replace(".", "").Replace(",", "").Trim().ToLower();
            if (prefixes.Contains(normalizedPart))
            {
                prefix = parts[0].Trim();
                parts.RemoveAt(0);
            }
        }

        if (parts.Count > 0)
        {
            // Might want to add more to this list, or use code/regex for roman-numeral detection
            string[] suffixes = { "jr", "sr", "i", "ii", "iii", "iv", "v", "vi", "vii", "viii", "ix", "x", "xi", "xii", "xiii", "xiv", "xv" };

            // If last part is a suffix, set suffix and remove part
            string normalizedPart = parts.Last().Replace(".", "").Replace(",", "").Trim().ToLower();
            if (suffixes.Contains(normalizedPart))
            {
                suffix = parts.Last().Replace(",", "").Trim();
                parts.RemoveAt(parts.Count - 1);
            }
        }

        // Done, if no more parts
        if (parts.Count == 0)
            return;

        // If only one part left...
        if (parts.Count == 1)
        {
            // If no prefix, assume first name, otherwise last
            // i.e.- "Dr Jones", "Ms Jones" -- likely to be last
            if(prefix == "")
                first = parts.First().Replace(",", "").Trim();
            else
                last = parts.First().Replace(",", "").Trim();
        }

        // If first part ends with a comma, assume format:
        //   Last, First [...First...]
        else if (parts.First().EndsWith(","))
        {
            last = parts.First().Replace(",", "").Trim();
            for (int x = 1; x < parts.Count; x++)
                first += parts[x].Replace(",", "").Trim() + " ";
            first = first.Trim();
        }

        // Otherwise assume format:
        // First [...Middle...] Last

        else
        {
            first = parts.First().Replace(",", "").Trim();
            last = parts.Last().Replace(",", "").Trim();
            for (int x = 1; x < parts.Count - 1; x++)
                middle += parts[x].Replace(",", "").Trim() + " ";
            middle = middle.Trim();
        }
    }

Sorry that the code is long and ugly, I haven't gotten around to cleaning it up. It is a C# extension, so you would use it like:

string name = "Miss Jessica Dark-Angel Alba";
string prefix, first, middle, last, suffix;
name.ParseName(out prefix, out first, out middle, out last, out suffix);

Answer 4

If you simply have to do this, add the guesses to the UI as an optional selection. This way, you could tell the user how you parsed the name and let them pick a different parsing from a list you provide.

Answer 5

A simpler way:

Install HumanNameParser NuGet:

Install-Package HumanNameParser

And call Parse extension method.

string name = "Mr Ali R Von Bayat III";

var result = name.Parse();

//result = new Name()
//{
//    Salutation = "Mr",
//    FirstName = "Ali",
//    MiddleInitials = "R",
//    LastName = "Von Bayat",
//    Suffix = "III"
//};