NAME
NameCase - Perl module to fix the case of people's names.
SYNOPSIS
# Working with scalars; complementing lc and uc.
use Lingua::EN::NameCase qw( nc ) ;
$FixedCasedName = nc( $OriginalName ) ;
$FixedCasedName = nc( \$OriginalName ) ;
# Working with arrays or array references.
use Lingua::EN::NameCase 'NameCase' ;
$FixedCasedName = NameCase( $OriginalName ) ;
@FixedCasedNames = NameCase( @OriginalNames ) ;
$FixedCasedName = NameCase( \$OriginalName ) ;
@FixedCasedNames = NameCase( \@OriginalNames ) ;
NameCase( \@OriginalNames ) ; # In-place.
# NameCase will not change a scalar in-place, i.e.
NameCase( \$OriginalName ) ; # WRONG: null operation.DESCRIPTION
Forenames and surnames are often stored either wholly in UPPERCASE or wholly in lowercase. This module allows you to convert names into the correct case where possible.
Although forenames and surnames are normally stored separately if they do appear in a single string, whitespace separated, NameCase and nc deal correctly with them.
NameCase currently correctly name cases names which include any of the following: Mc, Mac, al, el, ap, da, de, delle, della, di, du, del, der, la, le, lo, van and von.
It correctly deals with names which contain apostrophies and hyphens too.
EXAMPLE FIXES
Original Name Case
-------- ---------
KEITH Keith
LEIGH-WILLIAMS Leigh-Williams
MCCARTHY McCarthy
O'CALLAGHAN O'Callaghan
ST. JOHN St. Johnplus "son (daughter) of" etc. in various languages, e.g.:
VON STREIT von Streit
VAN DYKE van Dyke
AP LLWYD DAFYDD ap Llwyd Dafydd
etc.BUGS
The module covers the rules that I know of. There are probably a lot more rules, exceptions etc. for "Western"-style languages which could be incorporated.
We don't fix "ben" - for hebrew names this means son of, but it can mean "Ben" as a name in itself or as a form of "Benjamin". However we do fix "al" - for arabic names this means son of, even though it can also mean "Al" as a name in itself.
There are probably lots of exceptions and problems - but as a general data 'cleaner' it may be all you need.
Use Kim Ryan's NameParse.pm for any really sophisticated name parsing.
CHANGES
1998/4/20 First release.
1998/6/25 First public release.
1999/01/18 Second public release.
1999/02/08 Added Mac with Mack as an exception, thanks to Kim Ryan for this.
1999/05/05 Copied Kim Ryan's Mc/Mac solution from his NameParse.pm and replaced my Mc/Mac solution with his.
1999/05/08 nc can now use $_ as its default argument e.g. "$ans = nc ;" and "nc ;", both of which set $_, with the first one setting $ans also.
1999/07/30 Modified for CPAN and automatic testing. Stopped using $_ as the default argument.
1999/08/08 Changed licence to LGPL.
1999/09/07 Minor change to packaging for CPAN.
1999/09/09 Renamed package Lingua::EN::NameCase.pm as per John Porter's (CPAN) suggestion.
AUTHOR
Mark Summerfield. I can be contacted as <summer@chest.ac.uk> - please include the word 'namecase' in the subject line.
Thanks to Kim Ryan <kimaryan@ozemail.com.au> for his Mc/Mac solution.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) Mark Summerfield 1998/9. All Rights Reserved.
This module may be used/distributed/modified under the LGPL.