/ 
NameCase-1.00
/ Text::NameCase

NAME

NameCase - Perl module to fix the case of people's names.

SYNOPSIS

use Text::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.

# "Faster" version for working with scalars only; complementing lc and uc.

use Text::NameCase qw( nc ) ;

$FixedCasedName  = nc( $OriginalName ) ;

$FixedCasedName  = nc( \$OriginalName ) ;

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, space separated, NameCase and nc deal correctly with them.

NameCase currently correctly name cases names which include any of the following: Mc, el, ap, da, de, di, du, del, der, la, le, 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. John

plus "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 names that begin with "Mac" because we can't distinguish between MacDonald and Macadema... unless we used a list of literal names to check for?

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". Similarly we don't fix "al" - for arabic names this means son of, but 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.

CHANGES

1998/4/20 First release.

1998/6/25 First public release.

1999/01/18 Second public release.

AUTHOR

Mark Summerfield. I can be contacted as <mark.summerfield@chest.ac.uk> - please include the word 'namecase' in the subject line.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) Mark Summerfield 1998/9. All Rights Reserved.

This module may be used/distributed/modified under the same terms as Perl itself.