Name Parser

A simple Python module for parsing human names into their individual components.

Attributes

* HumanName.title
* HumanName.first
* HumanName.middle
* HumanName.last
* HumanName.suffix
* HumanName.nickname

Supports 3 comma placement variations for names of people in latin-based languages.

* Title Firstname "Nickname" Middle Middle Lastname Suffix
* Lastname, Title Firstname (Nickname) Middle Middle[,] Suffix [, Suffix]
* Title Firstname M Lastname, Suffix [, Suffix]

Examples:

* Doe-Ray, Col. Jonathan "John" A. Jérôme III
* Dr. Juan Q. Xavier de la Vega II
* Juan Q. Xavier Velasquez y Garcia, Jr.

Over 100 unit tests with example names. Should be unicode safe but it's fairly untested. Start a New Issue <https://github.com/derek73/python-nameparser/issues>_ for names that fail and I will try to fix it.

HumanName instances will pass an equals (==) test if their lower case unicode representations are the same.

Installation

pip install nameparser

I usually push changes to Pypi <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/nameparser>_ pretty quickly. But if you want to try out the latest code from GitHub you can install install with pip using the command below.

pip install -e git+git://github.com/derek73/python-nameparser.git#egg=nameparser

Usage

>>> from nameparser.parser import HumanName
>>> name = HumanName("Dr. Juan Q. Xavier de la Vega III")
>>> name.title
u'Dr.'
>>> name.first
u'Juan'
>>> name.middle
u'Q. Xavier'
>>> name.last
u'de la Vega'
>>> name.suffix
u'III'
>>> name.full_name = "Doe-Ray, Col. Jonathan "John" A. Jérôme III"
>>> name.title
u'Col.'
>>> name.first
u'John'
>>> name.middle
u'A. Jérôme'
>>> name.last
u'Doe-Ray'
>>> name.suffix
u'III'
>>> name.nickname
u'John'
>>> name.full_name = "Juan Q. Xavier Velasquez y Garcia, Jr."
>>> name.title
u''
>>> name.first
u'Juan'
>>> name.middle
u'Q. Xavier'
>>> name.last
u'Velasquez y Garcia'
>>> name.suffix
u'Jr.'
>>> name.middle = "Jason Alexander"
>>> name.middle
u'Jason Alexander'
>>> name
<HumanName : [
    Title: '' 
    First: 'Juan' 
    Middle: 'Jason Alexander' 
    Last: 'Velasquez y Garcia' 
    Suffix: 'Jr.'
    Nickname: ''
]>
>>> name = HumanName("Dr. Juan Q. Xavier de la Vega III")
>>> name2 = HumanName("de la vega, dr. juan Q. xavier III")
>>> name == name2
True
>>> len(name)
5
>>> list(name)
['Dr.', 'Juan', 'Q. Xavier', 'de la Vega', 'III']
>>> name[1:-1]
[u'Juan', u'Q. Xavier', u'de la Vega']
>>> name = HumanName('bob v. de la macdole-eisenhower phd')
>>> name.capitalize()
>>> unicode(name)
u'Bob V. de la MacDole-Eisenhower Ph.D.'
>>> # Don't touch good names
>>> name = HumanName('Shirley Maclaine')
>>> name.capitalize()
>>> unicode(name) 
u'Shirley Maclaine'

Capitalization Support

The HumanName class can try to guess the correct capitalization of name entered in all upper or lower case. It will not adjust the case of names entered in mixed case.

* bob v. de la macdole-eisenhower phd -> Bob V. de la MacDole-Eisenhower Ph.D.

Handling Nicknames

The content of parenthesis or double quotes in the name will be available from the nickname attribute. (Added in v0.2.9)

Output Format

The format of the strings returned with unicode() can be adjusted using standard python string formatting. The string's format() method will be passed a dictionary of names.

>>> name = HumanName("Rev John A. Kenneth Doe III")
>>> unicode(name)
"Rev John A. Kenneth Doe III"
>>> name.string_format = "{last}, {title} {first} {middle}, {suffix}"
>>> unicode(name)
"Doe, Rev John A. Kenneth, III"

Customizing the Parser with Your Own Constants

Recognition of titles, prefixes, suffixes and conjunctions is provided by matching the lower case characters of a name piece with pre-defined sets located in nameparser.constants. You can adjust them to suite your needs by passing your own set of constants when instantiating a new HumanName object. Be sure to use the lower case representation with no punctuation.

* prefixes_c = PREFIXES
* titles_c = TITLES
* suffixes_c = SUFFIXES
* conjunctions_c = CONJUNCTIONS
* capitalization_exceptions_c = CAPITALIZATION_EXCEPTIONS

Parser Customization Example ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Te" is a prefix in some languages, but a proper name in others. If you want your parser to parse it as title, add "te" to the prefixes_c when instantiating the HumanName class. Keep in mind that the constants should always be lower case.

>>> from nameparser import HumanName
>>> from nameparser.constants import PREFIXES
>>> 
>>> prefixes_c = PREFIXES | set(['te'])
>>> hn = HumanName(prefixes_c=prefixes_c)
>>> hn.full_name = "Te Awanui-a-Rangi Black"
>>> hn
<HumanName : [
    Title: '' 
    First: 'Te Awanui-a-Rangi' 
    Middle: '' 
    Last: 'Black' 
    Suffix: ''
    Nickname: ''
]>

Contributing via GitHub

Feel free to post new issues to the GitHub project. The easiest way to submit changes is to fork the project on GitHub and commit your changes there. I'll happily pull changes that include tests.

Please let me know if there are ways this library could be restructured to make it easier for you to use in your projects.

https://github.com/derek73/python-nameparser

Testing +++++++

Run tests.py to see if your changes broke anything.

``./tests.py``

You can also pass a string as the first argument to see how a specific name will be parsed.

$ ./tests.py "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham-Clinton"
<HumanName : [
    Title: 'Secretary of State' 
    First: 'Hillary' 
    Middle: '' 
    Last: 'Rodham-Clinton' 
    Suffix: ''
]>

Naming Practices and Resources

* US_Census_Surname_Data_2000_
* Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006_
* Wikipedia_Naming_conventions_
* Wikipedia_List_Of_Titles_

.. _US_Census_Surname_Data_2000: http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html .. _Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006: https://www.fbiic.gov/public/2008/nov/Naming_practice_guide_UK_2006.pdf .. _Wikipedia_Naming_conventions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(people) .. _Wikipedia_List_Of_Titles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title

Release Log

* 0.2.9 - Apr 1, 2014
    - Add a new nickname attribute containing anything in parenthesis or double quotes (`Issue 33 <https://code.google.com/p/python-nameparser/issues/detail?id=33>`_).
* 0.2.8 - Oct 25, 2013
    - Add support for Python 3.3+. Thanks to @corbinbs.
* 0.2.7 - Feb 13, 2013
    - Fix bug with multiple conjunctions in title
    - add legal and crown titles
* 0.2.6 - Feb 12, 2013
    - Fix python 2.6 import error on logging.NullHandler
* 0.2.5 - Feb 11, 2013
    - Set logging handler to NullHandler
    - Remove 'ben' from PREFIXES because it's more common as a name than a prefix.
    - Deprecate BlankHumanNameError. Do not raise exceptions if full_name is empty string. 
* 0.2.4 - Feb 10, 2013
    - Adjust logging, don't set basicConfig. Fix `Issue 10 <https://code.google.com/p/python-nameparser/issues/detail?id=10>`_ and `Issue 26 <https://code.google.com/p/python-nameparser/issues/detail?id=26>`_.
    - Fix handling of single lower case initials that are also conjunctions, e.g. "john e smith". Re `Issue 11 <https://code.google.com/p/python-nameparser/issues/detail?id=11>`_.
    - Fix handling of initials with no space separation, e.g. "E.T. Jones". Fix #11.
    - Do not remove period from first name, when present.
    - Remove 'e' from PREFIXES because it is handled as a conjunction.
    - Python 2.7+ required to run the tests. Mark known failures.
    - tests/test.py can now take an optional name argument that will return repr() for that name.
* 0.2.3 - Fix overzealous "Mac" regex
* 0.2.2 - Fix parsing error
* 0.2.0 
    - Significant refactor of parsing logic. Handle conjunctions and prefixes before
      parsing into attribute buckets.
    - Support attribute overriding by assignment.
    - Support multiple titles. 
    - Lowercase titles constants to fix bug with comparison. 
    - Move documentation to README.rst, add release log.
* 0.1.4 - Use set() in constants for improved speed. setuptools compatibility - sketerpot
* 0.1.3 - Add capitalization feature - twotwo
* 0.1.2 - Add slice support

yhydhx / python-nameparser

readme