Fantastic gem, can I give it formatting hints? or parse last first middle etc

[dnajd]

I notice it recognizes last, first middle etc

but believe it needs the comma. if I feed it a name like last first middle etc

without a comma it can't figure it out. but would be nice to be able to give it hints of the format. Is this already available?

[inukshuk]

Single names are supported whether you use a comma or not; see the examples here https://github.com/berkmancenter/namae#format-and-examples — we distinguish between sort-order and display-order, i.e.:

Alan Turing #-> display-order
Turing, Alan #-> sort-order

When you have multiple names it's a little more tricky, because the comma is often used to separate individual names as well as name parts. You can set the prefer_comma_as_separator option to tell Namae that the comma should be used as a separator. Look here to see all options and their default values: https://github.com/berkmancenter/namae/blob/master/lib/namae/parser.y#L96

Middle names are not parsed because the concept of 'middle name' is mostly a matter of personal taste. However, it's easy to split the given names if you're interested in that information.

[inukshuk]

I noticed in your example: last first middle would not work without a comma, but if you write it as first middle last it will work. So basically, when using a comma the last name comes first; when not using a comma it comes last. Notice that this means that if you have multiple last names (which is very common in Spanish for instance) you need to use the comma.