This is a universal, language-independent name parser.

Its purpose is to split a single string containing a full name, possibly including salutation, initials, suffixes etc., into meaningful parts like firstname, lastname, initials, and so on.

It is mostly tailored towards english names but works pretty well with non-english names as long as they use latin spelling.

E.g. Mr Anthony R Von Fange III is parsed to

• salutation: Mr.
• firstname: Anthony
• initials: R
• lastname: von Fange
• suffix: III

This parser is able to handle name patterns with and without comma:

... [firstname] ... [lastname] ...

... [lastname] ..., ... [firstname] ...

... [lastname] ..., ... [firstname] ..., [suffix]

• salutations (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Dr, etc.)
• first name
• middle names
• initials (single letters, possibly followed by a dot)
• nicknames (parts within parenthesis, brackets etc.)
• last names (also supports prefixes like von, de etc.)
• suffixes (Jr, Senior, 3rd, PhD, etc.)

• multi-language support for salutations, suffixes and lastname prefixes
• customizable nickname delimiters
• customizable normalisation of all output strings (original values remain accessible)
• customizable whitespace

More than 80 different successfully parsed name patterns can be found in the parser unit test.

composer require theiconic/name-parser

<?php

$parser = new TheIconic\NameParser\Parser();

$name = $parser->parse($input);

echo $name->getSalutation();
echo $name->getFirstname();
echo $name->getLastname();
echo $name->getMiddlename();
echo $name->getNickname();
echo $name->getInitials();
echo $name->getSuffix();

print_r($name->getAll()); // all parts as an associative array

echo $name; // re-prints the full normalised name

An empty string is returned for missing parts.

You can retrieve last name prefixes and pure last names separately with

echo $name->getLastnamePrefix();
echo $name->getLastname(true); // true enables strict mode for pure lastnames, only

By default, getNickname() returns the pure string of nick names. However, you can pass true to have the same normalised parenthesis wrapping applied as in echo $name:

echo $name->getNickname(); // The Giant
echo $name->getNickname(true); // (The Giant)

$parser = new TheIconic\NameParser\Parser([
    new TheIconic\NameParser\Language\English(), //default
    new TheIconic\NameParser\Language\German(),
])

$parser = new TheIconic\NameParser\Parser();
$parser->setNicknameDelimiters(['(' => ')']);

$parser = new TheIconic\NameParser\Parser();
$parser->setWhitespace("\t _.");

$parser = new TheIconic\NameParser\Parser();
$parser->setMaxSalutationIndex(2);

This will require salutations to appear within the first two words of the given input string. This defaults to half the amount of words in the input string, meaning that effectively the salutation may occur within the first half of the name parts.

THE ICONIC Name Parser library for PHP is released under the MIT License.