Extracting certain names/initials out of string variables

[Eli Mogel]

Hi Statalist, long time lurker, first time poster.

I am currently trying to clean my data, I began with only full names which were inputted by the people themselves. Therefore there is no consistent input as far as using a full name, initials, etc.

I have gotten as far as what you see below using this code

generate contact_peron_first = substr(contact_person, 1, strpos(contact_person, " ") - 1)  
generate contact_person_last = substr(contact_person,strpos(contact_person, " ") + 1, .)
replace contact_person_last = strtrim(contact_person_last)
generate contact_person_last_1 = substr(contact_person_last, 1, strpos(contact_person_last, " ") - 1)  
generate contact_person_last_2 = substr(contact_person_last,strpos(contact_person_last, " ") + 1, .)

input str45 contact_person str14 contact_peron_first str16 contact_person_last_1 str17 contact_person_last_2
Full Name                              First           Last_1                 Last_2                Last_3
"K. V Sarathkumar"                "K."             "V"                "Sarathkumar"      
"Katungal Padmanabhan Sasidharan" "Katungal"       "Padmanabhan"      "Sasidharan"      
"Katungal Padmanabhan Sasidharan" "Katungal"       "Padmanabhan"      "Sasidharan"      
"Katungal Padmanabhan Sasidharan" "Katungal"       "Padmanabhan"      "Sasidharan"      
"Katungal Padmanabhan Sasidharan" "Katungal"       "Padmanabhan"      "Sasidharan"      
"K S Shan"                        "K"              "S"                "Shan"            
"K S Shan"                        "K"              "S"                "Shan"            
"K S Shan"                        "K"              "S"                "Shan"            
"Brij Mohan   Sharma"             "Brij"           "Mohan"            "Sharma"          
"Rajeev K Sivadas"                "Rajeev"         "K"                "Sivadas"          
"Mr. Tim Sunil"                   "Mr."            "Tim"              "Sunil"            
"C. S. Suresh"                    "C."             "S."               "Suresh"    

end

What I really want is this:

input str45 contact_person str14 contact_peron_first str16 contact_person_last_1 str17 contact_person_last_2
Full Name                              First           Last_1                 Last_2                Last_3
"K. V Sarathkumar"                "K.V"          "Sarathkumar"      
"Mr. Tim Sunil"                       "Tim"          "Sunil"            
"K S Shan"                              "KS"          "Shan"

The problem is that there is no consistent way in which people used initials, honorifics, etc... At the most basic level I would just want initials together as first name, then have the rest as last name. Any advice?

[Rich Goldstein]

many years ago, Bill Gould, now Pres. emiritis of StataCorp, wrote a neat command called -extrname- which does most of what you want I think; use -search- to find and download

[Eli Mogel]

many years ago, Bill Gould, now Pres. emiritis of StataCorp, wrote a neat command called -extrname- which does most of what you want I think; use -search- to find and download

Thanks, I'll look for it and try it out !


EDIT: For anything that has found this post with the same problems, I would suggest using downloading extrname and using it. It seems to fix 90% of my problems. Thanks!

[Nick Cox]

net stb 13 dm13

will bring up a clickable link.

On #1: split is not the answer here, but you could use it next time.

[Mohamed Mahmoud]

Dear Stata members,

Sorry for revisiting these again but I have two questions:

QUESTION ONE:

The var NAME in my dataset is in the form of the LAST NAME, FIRST NAME , and then middle name without a separate comma

How I can extract only the two names to be consistent along my data ?? as in this example

NAME	WANTED
QAZI, MOHAMED	QAZI, MOHAMED
QAZI, MOHAMED	QAZI, MOHAMED
QAZI, MOHAMED ASHRAF	QAZI, MOHAMED
RADOW, NORMAN	RADOW, NORMAN
RADOW, NORMAN	RADOW, NORMAN
RADOW, NORMAN	RADOW, NORMAN
RADOW, NORMAN J	RADOW, NORMAN
RAESE, JOHN	RAESE, JOHN
RAESE, JOHN R MR	RAESE, JOHN

QUESTION TWO:

to be able to merge between datasets the second dataset includes only the last name and first name separately (i.e. the first letter is a upper case and the rest of the name is in a lowercase format?

How to combine the last name (lower case) with the first name (lower case) to form an uppercase full name with the comma in between? like below

LAST NAME	FIRST NAME	WANTED WITH COMMA	WANTEDWITHOUT COMMA
Qazi	Mohmed	QAZI, MOHAMED	QAZI MOHAMED
Radow	Norman	RADOW, NORMAN	RADOW NORMAN

[Andrew Musau]

#5: Asked and answered in #18 https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...-a-comma/page2. Please do not repeat the same question in multiple places.

[Mohamed Mahmoud]

I am sorry I posted it instead of saving it

Many thanks for your response,