THE ICONIC Name Parser

Purpose

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

Features

Supported patterns

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

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

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

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

Supported parts

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.)

Other features

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

Examples

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

Setup

composer require theiconic/name-parser

Usage

Basic usage

<?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.

Setting Languages

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

Setting nickname delimiters

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

Setting whitespace characters

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

License

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

francislavoie / name-parser