nameparser parses human names into seven fields — title, given, middle, family, suffix, nickname, maiden. Results are immutable, configuration is composable, and locale packs are opt-in.

📣 nameparser 2.4 is out. It uses letter case to read post-nominal credentials much more reliably — Jack MA is Jack with an MA and Jack Ma is the surname Ma, and Jane Smith, PhD MA keeps both credentials together — recognizes more naming conventions (Catalan, Irish, Finnish, Malay and others), and writes credentials the usual way when it repairs case. The release log has the details.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean names written in their own scripts are read family-first, unspaced Korean names are split against the census surname list, and CJK honorifics are recognized. See East Asian names.

Existing HumanName code from 1.x keeps working through 2.x, and most of it needs no changes; see Coming from 1.x below. Please open an issue for anything that parses wrong.

pip install nameparser

Requires Python 3.11+.

>>> from nameparser import parse
>>> name = parse("Dr. Juan Q. Xavier de la Vega III (Doc Vega)")
>>> name
<ParsedName: [
    title: 'Dr.'
    given: 'Juan'
    middle: 'Q. Xavier'
    family: 'de la Vega'
    suffix: 'III'
    nickname: 'Doc Vega'
]>
>>> name.family_base, name.family_particles
('Vega', 'de la')
>>> name.given_names, name.surnames
('Juan Q. Xavier', 'Q. Xavier de la Vega')
>>> name.render("{family}, {given}")
'de la Vega, Juan'

>>> parse("Jack MA").suffix                    # capitals mark a credential
'MA'
>>> parse("Jack Ma").family                    # and a surname
'Ma'
>>> parse("Jane Smith, PhD MA").suffix
'PhD MA'

>>> parse("김민준").family                     # Korean: unspaced, split on the census list
'김'
>>> parse("高橋 みなみ").family                 # Japanese: kanji with kana, family first
'高橋'
>>> parse("김민준씨").suffix                   # an honorific written against the name
'씨'
>>> parse("г-н Иван Петров").title             # Cyrillic title
'г-н'
>>> parse("محمد بن سلمان").family              # Arabic: بن chains onto the family name
'بن سلمان'

>>> from nameparser import locales, parser_for
>>> chinese = parser_for(locales.ZH)           # Han text does not say which language
>>> chinese.parse("毛泽东").family              # so splitting it is opt-in
'毛'
>>> russian = parser_for(locales.RU)
>>> russian.parse("Сидоров Иван Петрович").family
'Сидоров'
>>> locales.available()
('ja', 'ru', 'tr_az', 'zh')

• Using the parser — the full tour: input shapes, aggregates, rendering, comparison, ambiguities, tokens
• Customizing the parser — vocabulary, behavior, and presentation
• Locale packs — opt-in bundles for East Slavic patronymics, Turkic markers, and more
• There's also a CLI: python -m nameparser --json "Doe, John"

HumanName and CONSTANTS keep working in 2.0 — same imports, same attributes, same mutation API. What 2.0 removes is the batch of deprecations 1.3 and 1.4 announced, so if your test suite runs clean on 1.4 under python -W error::DeprecationWarning, you are nearly done. Two things that check will not catch: four removals 1.4 never warned about (three raise on contact, the fourth only warns), and one that changes results silently — name == "John Smith" is now False. Later 2.x releases add a few breaks of their own. Migrating from HumanName covers all of them, and translates a v1 customization into the new API whenever that's convenient for you.

See the release log for the full list of changes in the 2.0 series.

LGPL licensed. See LICENSE for details.