Regular expression for first and last name

Question

For website validation purposes  I need first name and last name validation   For the first name  it should only contain letters  can be several words with spaces  and has a minimum of three characters  but a maximum at top 30 characters  An empty string shouldn t be validated  e g  Jason  jason  jason smith  jason smith  JASON  Jason smith  jason Smith  and jason SMITH    For the last name  it should be a single word  only letters  with at least three characters  but at most 30 characters  Empty strings shouldn t be validated  e g  lazslo  Lazslo  and LAZSLO

User · Answer

After going through all of these answers I found a way to build a tiny regex that supports most languages and only allows for word characters. It even supports some special characters like hyphens, spaces and apostrophes. I've tested in python and it supports the characters below:

^[\w'\-,.][^0-9_!¡?÷?¿/\\+=@#$%ˆ&*(){}|~<>;:[\]]{2,}$

Characters supported:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
áéíóúäëïöüÄ'
???
lLoOuUZàáâäãåacceèéêëeiìíîïlnòóôöõøùúûüuu
ÿýzzñçcšžÀÁÂÄÃÅACCEEÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏIL
NÒÓÔÖÕØÙÚÛÜUUŸÝZZÑßÇŒÆCŠŽ.-
ñÑâê?????????????
????????? ?????? ??

User · Answer

As macek said   Don t forget about names like      Mathias d Arras      Martin Luther King  Jr       Hector Sausage-Hausen   and to remove cases like        Mathias       Martin king    Jr -   This will cover more cases      a-z             a-z    -

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I ve tried almost everything on this page  then I decided to modify the most voted answer which ended up working best  Simply matches all languages and includes   -   characters  Here it is      p L     -    u

User · Answer

I use          u00c0- u01ffa-zA-Z -   2      s  u00c0- u01ffa-zA-Z -  2      i   And test for maxlength using some other means

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I m working on the app that validates International Passports  ICAO   We support only english characters  While most foreign national characters can be represented by a character in the Latin alphabet e g     by e  there are several national characters that require an extra letter to represent them such as the German umlaut which requires an    e    to be added to the letter e g     by ae   This is the JavaScript Regex for the first and last names we use      a-zA-Z   -       The max number of characters on the international passport is up to 31  We use maxlength  31  to better word error messages instead of including it in the regex   Here is a snippet from our code in AngularJS 1 6 with form and error handling    x000D   x000D  class PassportController   x000D    constructor     x000D      this details       x000D         English letters  spaces and the following symbols   -   are allowed x000D         Max length determined by ng-maxlength for better error messaging x000D      this nameRegex      a-zA-Z   -      x000D      x000D    x000D   x000D  angular module  akyc     ngMessages    x000D     controller  PassportController   PassportController   x000D    x000D   has-error p ng-message    x000D    color   bc111e  x000D    x000D   x000D   tip   x000D    color   535f67  x000D    x000D   lt script src  https   ajax googleapis com ajax libs angularjs 1 6 6 angular min js  gt  lt  script gt  x000D   lt script src  https   code angularjs org 1 6 6 angular-messages min js  gt  lt  script gt  x000D   x000D   lt main ng-app  akyc  ng-controller  PassportController as  ctrl  gt  x000D     lt form name   ctrl form  gt  x000D   x000D       lt div name  lastName  ng-class     has-error    ctrl form lastName  invalid    gt  x000D           lt label for  pp-last-name  gt Surname lt  label gt  x000D           lt div class  tip  gt Exactly as it appears on your passport lt  div gt  x000D           lt div ng-messages   ctrl form lastName  error  ng-if   ctrl form  submitted  id  last-name-error  gt  x000D             lt p ng-message  required  gt Please enter your last name lt  p gt  x000D             lt p ng-message  maxlength  gt This field can be at most 31 characters long lt  p gt  x000D             lt p ng-message  pattern  gt Only English letters  spaces and the following symbols   -   are allowed lt  p gt  x000D           lt  div gt  x000D           x000D           lt input type  text  id  pp-last-name  ng-model   ctrl details lastName  name  lastName  x000D                 class  form-control  required ng-pattern   ctrl nameRegex  ng-maxlength  31  aria-describedby  last-name-error    gt  x000D         lt  div gt  x000D   x000D         lt button type  submit  class  btn btn-primary  gt Test lt  button gt  x000D   x000D     lt  form gt  x000D   lt  main gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

var name   document getElementById  login name   value   if   name length  lt  4   amp  amp  name length  gt  30         alert    Name length is mismatch            var pattern   new RegExp    a-z  0-9        var return value   var pattern exec name   if   return value    null         alert    Please give valid Name        return false

User · Answer

You make false assumptions on the format of first and last name  It is probably better not to validate the name at all  apart from checking that it is empty

User · Answer

This is what I use   This regex accepts only names with minimum characters  from A-Z a-z  space and -   Names example    Ionut Ionete  Ionut-Ionete Cantemir  Ionete Ionut-Cantemirm Ionut-Cantemir Ionete-Second   The limit of name s character is 3  If you want to change this  modify  3   to  6      a-zA-Z -    3   s   a-zA-Z -    3

User · Answer

A simple function using preg match in php   lt  php function name validation  name        if   preg match     a-zA-Z         name      false            echo   name is a valid name         else           echo   name is not a valid name              Test name validation  89name      gt

User · Answer

For first and last names theres are really only 2 things you should be looking for    Length Content   Here is my regular expression   var regex      A-Za-z-   3 20      d    1  Length  Here the  3 20  constrains the length of the string to be between 3 and 20 characters    2  Content  The information between the square brackets  A-Za-z  allows uppercase and lowercase characters  All subsequent symbols  -    are also allowed

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So  with customer we create this crazy regex              -      amp                                            lt   gt      d s

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Simplest way  Just check almost 2 words       s       s        Valid names  John Doe pedro alberto ch Ar  Gen Mathias d Arras Martin Luther King  Jr   No valid names  John

User · Answer

If you want the whole first name to be between 3 and 30 characters with no restrictions on individual words  try this     a-zA-Z   3 30    Beware that it excludes all foreign letters as               If you want the limit of 3 to 30 characters to apply to each individual word  Jens regexp will do the job

User · Answer

Don t forget about names like    Mathias d Arras Martin Luther King  Jr  Hector Sausage-Hausen   This should do the trick for most things      a-z    -    i  OR Support international names with super sweet unicode      a-zA-Z            acce        ei        ln                    uu    zz    c                ACCEE                ILN                    UU    ZZ          C           -    u

User · Answer

For simplicities sake  you can use        s       The thing I like about this is that the last name is always after the first name  so if you re going to enter this matched groups into a database  and the name is John M  Smith  the 1st group will be John M   and the 2nd group will be Smith

User · Answer

p L  2        asserts position at start of a line    p L  matches any kind of letter from any language   2   Quantifier     Matches between 2 and unlimited times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     asserts position at the end of a line  So it should be a name in any language containing at least 2 letters or symbols  without numbers or other characters

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There is one issue with the top voted answer here which recommends this regex     a-z    -    i  It takes spaces only as a valid name  The best solution in my opinion is to add a negative look forward to the beginning       s   a-z    -     i

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I have created a custom regex to deal with names  I have tried these types of names and found working perfect  John Smith John D Largy John Doe-Smith John Doe Smith Hector Sausage-Hausen Mathias d Arras Martin Luther King Ai Wong Chao Chang Alzbeta Bara  My RegEx looks like this     a-zA-Z  2   s a-zA-Z  1    -  a-zA-Z  2   s   a-zA-Z  1       MVC4 Model   RegularExpression  quot    a-zA-Z  2    s a-zA-Z  1    -  a-zA-Z  2    s   a-zA-Z  1      quot   ErrorMessage    quot Valid Charactors include  A-Z   a-z     space -  quot      Please note the double    for escape characters For those of you that are new to RegEx I thought I d include a explanation                     start of line  a-zA-Z  2         will except a name with at least two characters  s                 will look for white space between name and surname  a-zA-Z  1         needs at least 1 Character    -               possibility of       or   -   for double barreled and hyphenated surnames  a-zA-Z  2         will except a name with at least two characters  s                 possibility of another whitespace   a-zA-Z  1        possibility of a second surname

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Fullname with only one whitespace     a-zA-Z  - pL          2   a-zA-Z  - pL     a-zA-Z  - pL

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Try these solutions  for maximum compatibility  as I have already posted here   JavaScript    var nm re             0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -  s    1          -     0 1   2      0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -              0 1       0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -   s    1          -      0 1   2       0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -   s    2            HTML5    lt input type  text  name  full name  id  full name  pattern           0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -  s    1          -     0 1   2      0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -              0 1       0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -   s    1          -      0 1   2       0-9                      amp         lt  gt            -   s    2          required gt

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This seems to do the job for me     S  2     S  2      S  2

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This regex work for me  was using in Angular 8       a-zA-Z   -     a-zA-Z   -      2 30      It will be invalid if there is -        Any whitespace start or end of the name   Got symbols e g      Less than 2 or more than 30      Example invalid First Name  whitespace     Example valid First Name

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First name would be     a-zA-Z  3 30  s       If you need the whole first name part to be shorter than 30 letters  you need to check that seperately  I think  The expression    3 30   should do that   Your last name requirements would translate into     a-zA-Z  3 30     but you should check these  There are plenty of last names containing spaces

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The following expression will work on any language supported by UTF-16 and will ensure that there s a minimum of two components to the name  i e  first   last   but will also allow any number of middle names       S     S   u   At the time of this writing it seems none of the other answers meet all of that criteria  Even   p L  2     which is the closest  falls short because it will also match  invisible  characters  such as U FEFF  Zero Width No-Break Space

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I have searched and searched and played and played with it and although it is not perfect it may help others making the attempt to validate first and last names that have been provided as one variable     In my case  that variable is  name    I used the following code for my PHP       if  preg match    b  A-Z  1  a-z  1 30  -   0 1   A-Z  1  -     1  A-Z  0 1         a-z  1 30  -   0 1   a-z  1 2   -    1  A-Z  1  a-z  1 30   2 5      name          there is no space line break between in the above  if statement   any that          you notice or perceive are only there for formatting purposes                 pass - successful match - do something       else         fail - unsuccessful match - do something   I am learning RegEx myself but I do have the explanation for the code as provided by RegEx buddy  Here it is    Assert position at a word boundary    b      Match the regular expression below and capture its match into backreference number 1     A-Z  1  a-z  1 30  -   0 1   A-Z  1  -     1  A-Z  0 1  a-z  1 30  -   0 1   a-z  1 2   -    1  A-Z  1  a-z  1 30   2 5       Between 2 and 5 times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     2 5         I NEED SOME HELP HERE WITH UNDERSTANDING THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THIS NOTE      Note  I repeated the capturing group itself   The group will capture only the last iteration   Put a capturing group around the repeated group to capture all iterations     2 5     Match either the regular expression below  attempting the next alternative only if this one fails     A-Z  1  a-z  1 30  -   0 1       Match a single character in the range between    A    and    Z       A-Z  1       Exactly 1 times    1       Match a single character in the range between    a    and    z       a-z  1 30       Between one and 30 times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     1 30       Match a single character present in the list    -        -   0 1       Between zero and one times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     0 1       Or match regular expression number 2 below  attempting the next alternative only if this one fails     A-Z  1  -     1  A-Z  0 1  a-z  1 30  -   0 1       Match a single character in the range between    A    and    Z       A-Z  1       Exactly 1 times    1       Match a single character present in the list below    -     1       Exactly 1 times    1       One of the characters    -       -     A   character           Match a single character in the range between    A    and    Z       A-Z  0 1       Between zero and one times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     0 1       Match a single character in the range between    a    and    z       a-z  1 30       Between one and 30 times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     1 30       Match a single character present in the list    -        -   0 1       Between zero and one times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     0 1       Or match regular expression number 3 below  the entire group fails if this one fails to match     a-z  1 2   -    1  A-Z  1  a-z  1 30       Match a single character in the range between    a    and    z       a-z  1 2       Between one and 2 times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     1 2       Match a single character in the range between         and             -    1       Exactly 1 times    1       Match a single character in the range between    A    and    Z       A-Z  1       Exactly 1 times    1       Match a single character in the range between    a    and    z       a-z  1 30       Between one and 30 times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy     1 30       I know this validation totally assumes that every person filling out the form has a western name and that may eliminates the vast majority of folks in the world  However  I feel like this is a step in the proper direction  Perhaps this regular expression is too basic for the gurus to address simplistically or maybe there is some other reason that I was unable to find the above code in my searches   I spent way too long trying to figure this bit out  you  will probably notice just how foggy my mind is on all this if you look at my test names below     I tested the code on the following names and the results are in parentheses to the right of each name    STEVE SMITH   fail  Stev3 Smith   fail  STeve Smith   fail  Steve SMith   fail  Steve Sm1th   passed on the Steve Sm  d Are to Beaware  passed on the Are to Beaware   Jo Blow   passed  Hyoung Kyoung Wu  passed   Mike O Neal  passed  Steve Johnson-Smith  passed    Jozef-Schmozev Hiemdel  passed    O Henry Smith   passed  Mathais d Arras   passed  Martin Luther King Jr   passed  Downtown-James Brown  passed  Darren McCarty  passed  George De FunkMaster  passed  Kurtis B-Ball Basketball  passed  Ahmad el Jeffe  passed      If you have basic names  there must be more than one up to five for the above code to work  that are similar to those that I used during testing  this code might be for you   If you have any improvements  please let me know   I am just in the early stages  first few months of figuring out RegEx   Thanks and good luck  Steve

[regex] Regular expression for first and last name

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