Comments on: Splitting names http://www.onlineaspect.com/2009/08/17/splitting-names/ a blog about building stuff on the web Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:05:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Josh Fraser http://www.onlineaspect.com/2009/08/17/splitting-names/comment-page-1/#comment-640 Josh Fraser Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:06:11 +0000 http://www.onlineaspect.com/?p=431#comment-640 Glad you found this useful and good catch on the parentheses issue. Perhaps you can merge in your code for handling last name, first name? That's definitely a common use-case that I missed. I've set up Google Code and given you commit access at <a href="http://code.google.com/p/php-name-parser/." target="_blank">http://code.google.com/p/php-name-parser/.</a> Glad you found this useful and good catch on the parentheses issue. Perhaps you can merge in your code for handling last name, first name? That's definitely a common use-case that I missed. I've set up Google Code and given you commit access at http://code.google.com/p/php-name-parser/.

]]> By: Pete Warden http://www.onlineaspect.com/2009/08/17/splitting-names/comment-page-1/#comment-638 Pete Warden Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:16:39 +0000 http://www.onlineaspect.com/?p=431#comment-638 That rocks, thanks Josh! I have very similar problems, but nowhere near so comprehensive a solution. In my case I'm trying to canonicalize display names from email address headers. One common case is that the name will appear as "Warden, Pete" - I try to detect and flip those, but I'm guessing that's not an issue for your data set? Also there's sometimes multiple words inside the parentheses, eg "Pete Warden (Mailana Inc)", but from inspection it looks like you're only catching the first word with your parentheses check? I'd love to see this on Google Code, there's some other functionality I'm working on that might fit here, like gender guessing from first names: <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~edaly/Text-GenderFromName-0.32/GenderFromName.pm" target="_blank">http://search.cpan.org/~edaly/Text-GenderFromName...</a> That rocks, thanks Josh! I have very similar problems, but nowhere near so comprehensive a solution.

In my case I'm trying to canonicalize display names from email address headers. One common case is that the name will appear as "Warden, Pete" – I try to detect and flip those, but I'm guessing that's not an issue for your data set? Also there's sometimes multiple words inside the parentheses, eg "Pete Warden (Mailana Inc)", but from inspection it looks like you're only catching the first word with your parentheses check?

I'd love to see this on Google Code, there's some other functionality I'm working on that might fit here, like gender guessing from first names:
http://search.cpan.org/~edaly/Text-GenderFromName...

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