A Parser for Human Names

Description

Human names are complicated and nonstandard things. Humaniformat attempts to provide functions for parsing those names, making a best-guess attempt to distinguish sub-components such as prefixes, suffixes, middle names and salutations.

Get or set a name's first name

Description

as in the lubridate package, individual components of a name can be both extracted or set using the relevant function call - see the examples.

Usage

first_name(x)

first_name(x) <- value

Arguments

See Also

salutation, middle_name, last_name and suffix for other accessors.

Examples

#Get a first name
example_name <- "Mr Jim Jeffries"
first_name(example_name)

#Set a first name
first_name(example_name) <- "Prof"

Reformat Period-Separated Names

Description

a common pattern for names is for first and middle names to be represented by initials. Unfortunately depending on how this is done, that can make things problematic; "G. K. Chesterton" is easy to parse, but "G.K. Chesterton" or "G.K.Chesterton" is not. format_period takes names that are period-separated in this fashion and reformats them to ensure there are spaces between each initial. Periods after any space in the name are preserved, so "G.K. Chesterton, M.D." does not become "G. K. Chesterton, M. D. ".

Usage

format_period(names)

Arguments

See Also

format_reverse for names stored as "Lastname, Firstname", and parse_names to parse the output of this function.

Examples

format_period("G.K.Chesterton")

Reformat Reversed Names

Description

a common pattern for names is 'Lastname Suffix, Salutation Firstname' - or to put that more practically, 'Jeffries PhD, Mr Bernard'. format_reverse takes these reversed names and reformats them to a form that parse_names can handle.

Usage

format_reverse(names)

Arguments

Value

a vector containing the reformatted names

See Also

parse_names, which works more reliably if reversed names have been reformatted, and format_period for period-separated names.

Examples

# Take a reversed name and un-reverse it
format_reverse("Keyes, Oliver")

Get or set a name's last name

Description

as in the lubridate package, individual components of a name can be both extracted or set using the relevant function call - see the examples.

Usage

last_name(x)

last_name(x) <- value

Arguments

See Also

salutation, first_name, middle_name and suffix for other accessors.

Examples

#Get a last name
example_name <- "Mr Jim Toby Jeffries"
last_name(example_name)

#Set a last name
last_name(example_name) <- "Smith"

Get or set a name's middle name

Description

as in the lubridate package, individual components of a name can be both extracted or set using the relevant function call - see the examples.

Usage

middle_name(x)

middle_name(x) <- value

Arguments

See Also

salutation, first_name, last_name and suffix for other accessors.

Examples

#Get a middle name
example_name <- "Mr Jim Toby Jeffries"
middle_name(example_name)

#Set a middle name
middle_name(example_name) <- "Richard"

Parse Human Names

Description

human names are complex things; sometimes people have honorifics, or not. Or a single middle name, or many. Or a compound surname, or not a compound surname but 'PhD' at the end of their name, and augh.

parse_names provides a simple function for taking consistently formatted human names and splitting them into salutation, first_name, middle_name, last_name and suffix. It is capable of dealing with compound surnames, multiple middle names, and similar variations, and is fully vectorised.

Usage

parse_names(names)

Arguments

Value

a data.frame with the columns salutation, first_name, middle_name, last_name, suffix and full_name (which contains the original name). In the event that a name doesn't have a salutation, middle name, suffix, or so on, an NA will appear.

Examples

# Parse a simple name
parse_names("Oliver Keyes")

# Parse a more complex name
parse_names("Hon. Oliver Timothy Keyes Esq.")

Get or set a name's saltation

Description

as in the lubridate package, individual components of a name can be both extracted or set using the relevant function call - see the examples. In the event that you attempt to set a component to NA, no modification will be made; in the event that you try to get a component that isn't present, an NA will be returned.

Usage

salutation(x)

salutation(x) <- value

Arguments

See Also

first_name, middle_name, last_name and suffix for other accessors.

Examples

#Get a salutation
example_name <- "Mr Jim Jeffries"
salutation(example_name)

#Set a salutation
salutation(example_name) <- "Prof"

Get or set a name's suffix

Description

as in the lubridate package, individual components of a name can be both extracted or set using the relevant function call - see the examples.

Usage

suffix(x)

suffix(x) <- value

Arguments

See Also

salutation, first_name, middle_name and last_name for other accessors.

Examples

#Get a suffix]
example_name <- "Mr Jim Toby Jeffries Esq"
suffix(example_name)

#Set a suffix
suffix(example_name) <- "PhD"