Name Parser
Split full names into title, first, middle, last and suffix, handling particles, compound surnames and reversed order, while showing where automatic parsing is unreliable.
Last reviewed by the Radiatus Cloud team
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Names do not have a structure
The assumption that a name is a first name followed by a last name is wrong for most of the world. Spanish naming convention gives two surnames, one from each parent. Many Indonesian names have a single component. Icelandic surnames are patronymics that change each generation. Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Hungarian names put the family name first. East Asian names romanised into a Western order may or may not have been reversed. There is no parser that handles all of this correctly, because the input does not contain the information needed to decide.
The particles are the hard part in Western names
Surnames such as van der Berg, de la Cruz, O'Brien, McDonald and St. John contain elements that are part of the surname rather than middle names. Capitalisation varies by country: the Dutch write "van der Berg" lower case when a first name precedes it and "Van der Berg" when it does not. A parser that splits on spaces gets all of these wrong, and the failure is silent because the output still looks like a name.
Ask rather than parse where you can
The correct engineering answer for a form is usually a single full name field, because that is the only field every person on earth can fill in correctly. Where components are genuinely needed, such as for a formal salutation, asking directly is more reliable than parsing. This tool exists for the case where you have inherited a list of full names and must split them, and it reports its own confidence for each because some of them will be wrong.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why is name parsing unreliable?
Because names do not have a universal structure. Spanish names have two surnames, East Asian names put the family name first, Icelandic surnames are patronymics, and many names have a single component. The input does not contain the information needed to decide which convention applies.
How are particles handled?
Elements such as van, de, der, la, di, von, bin and ibn are treated as part of the surname rather than as middle names, and O' and Mc prefixes are kept attached. Capitalisation conventions differ by country, so the original casing is preserved rather than corrected.
What about names in family name first order?
A comma is the reliable signal: "Smith, John" is unambiguous. Without one, a name written in family name first order is indistinguishable from one in the other order, and the tool flags such names as uncertain rather than guessing.
Should I store names as components?
Usually not. A single full name field is the only one every person can complete correctly. Store components only where you genuinely need them, and collect them by asking rather than by parsing, which is more reliable and less likely to offend.
What confidence should I require?
Review anything the tool marks as uncertain, which is where a particle, a suffix, an unusual number of components or an ambiguous order was detected. High confidence entries are the ordinary two and three part Western names, and those are the ones parsing handles well.
Privacy & Security
Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
How to Use
Paste a list of names, one per line, to split them into components.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.
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