Human names are complicated. They don't necessarily follow any rules. Here's a good article about the complexities of names.
As that article advises, it's ideal to just store a user's full name, and not assume anything about the form the name takes.
However, there are times when it is necessary to have a split given name and family name. Such as when integrating with another system that made different design choices.
This package does a best-guess attempt to split a full name string into given name and family name. For many Western names, it will get it right. It knows about some common family name prefixes used in many European-language names, and initials. It removes salutations (Miss, Doctor, etc) and suffixes (III, Jr, etc).
from splitter import FullNameSplitter
splitter("George H. W. Bush")
# => ["George H. W.", "Bush"]
splitter("Kevin J. O'Connor")
# => ["Kevin J.", "O'Connor"]
splitter("Thomas G. Della Fave")
# => ["Thomas G.", "Della Fave"]
splitter("Gabriel Van Helsing")
# => ["Gabriel", "Van Helsing"]
# If full name isn't complete, it tries to split partially:
splitter("George W.")
# => ["George W.", null]
splitter("George")
# => ["George", null]
splitter("Van Helsing")
# => [null, "Van Helsing"]
splitter("d'Artagnan")
# => [null, "d'Artagnan"]If it can't split a name correctly, it is possible to split by comma:
splitter("John Quincy Adams")
# => ["John Quincy", "Adams"]
splitter("John, Quincy Adams")
# => ["John", "Quincy Adams"]Original Ruby version created by Pavel Gorbokon, with contributions by Michael S. Klishin and Trevor Creech.
This Python port by Felipe Hertzer.
Released under the MIT license.