Introduction

We all take our names for granted and yet there is so much information in it. Your name reveals a lot of information about who you are. It tells if you're a man or a women, what language you speak and it can even reveal your nationality.

Validating a phone number, zip code or email address is simple. You don’t need a parsing service for that. But parsing a name and getting information out of it is much harder. That is where we come in: Name Parser offers a Web App and API that splits a complete name into useful information such as first name, last name, gender and nationality. It makes your live as a developer or data scientist much easier.

Just give us a name and we'll give you the useful components.

Supporting 113 countries

In order to properly parse names, our service uses an huge database with 1.712.459 first names and 5.238.897 last names from 113 different countries. A significant part of this name data is available for purchase as a CSV file with names and gender at Name Census .

There are many names such as Robin, Pascal or Mickey, which are mainly used for girls in one country and for boys in other countries. By specifying the country code in the query, we can determine the gender of a name with greater certainty.

Country Names Country Names
United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates 9.196 Afghanistan Afghanistan 4.881
Albania Albania 3.552 Angola Angola 2.673
Argentina Argentina 16.530 Austria Austria 15.983
Australia Australia 20.831 Azerbaijan Azerbaijan 2.148
Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina 3.951 Bangladesh Bangladesh 6.998
Belgium Belgium 27.527 Burkina Faso Burkina Faso 3.042
Bulgaria Bulgaria 6.635 Bermuda Bermuda 3.091
Bolivia Bolivia 2.659 Brazil Brazil 109.186
Belarus Belarus 2.569 Canada Canada 28.305
Switzerland Switzerland 58.942 Ivory Coast Ivory Coast 2.759
Chile Chile 5.877 Cameroon Cameroon 4.797
China China 9.321 Colombia Colombia 12.002
Costa Rica Costa Rica 4.937 Cyprus Cyprus 2.364
Czech Republic Czech Republic 8.829 Germany Germany 37.559
Denmark Denmark 131.094 Dominican Republic Dominican Republic 5.372
Algeria Algeria 4.160 Ecuador Ecuador 4.941
Egypt Egypt 5.979 Spain Spain 59.853
Finland Finland 5.588 France France 44.949
United Kingdom United Kingdom 56.508 Georgia Georgia 4.638
Ghana Ghana 4.779 Greece Greece 5.803
Guatemala Guatemala 4.951 Hong Kong Hong Kong 4.612
Honduras Honduras 3.438 Croatia Croatia 3.029
Hungary Hungary 9.030 Indonesia Indonesia 18.446
Ireland Ireland 9.715 Israel Israel 3.871
India India 25.465 Iraq Iraq 3.450
Iran Iran 4.182 Italy Italy 27.859
Jersey Jersey 4.436 Jamaica Jamaica 11.080
Jordan Jordan 2.193 Japan Japan 8.045
Kenya Kenya 5.878 South Korea South Korea 5.998
Kuwait Kuwait 2.280 Kazakhstan Kazakhstan 2.925
Lebanon Lebanon 3.136 Liberia Liberia 6.136
Lithuania Lithuania 1.780 Luxembourg Luxembourg 4.104
Latvia Latvia 1.997 Morocco Morocco 4.110
Macedonia Macedonia 2.670 Mexico Mexico 17.285
Malaysia Malaysia 9.649 Nigeria Nigeria 10.158
Nicaragua Nicaragua 2.699 Netherlands Netherlands 23.575
Norway Norway 31.505 Nepal Nepal 4.079
New Zealand New Zealand 7.203 Panama Panama 3.307
Peru Peru 6.914 Philippines Philippines 13.577
Pakistan Pakistan 8.209 Poland Poland 53.686
Palestine Palestine 1.984 Portugal Portugal 17.511
Paraguay Paraguay 2.844 Qatar Qatar 3.110
Romania Romania 7.616 Serbia Serbia 3.613
Russia Russia 36.259 Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia 4.576
Sudan Sudan 1.978 Sweden Sweden 36.289
Singapore Singapore 9.290 Slovenia Slovenia 9.613
Slovakia Slovakia 4.621 Senegal Senegal 2.151
Somalia Somalia 1.975 El Salvador El Salvador 2.591
Syria Syria 2.880 Thailand Thailand 6.476
Tunisia Tunisia 2.312 Turkey Turkey 167.103
Taiwan Taiwan 3.991 Tanzania Tanzania 2.661
Ukraine Ukraine 7.652 Uganda Uganda 3.117
United States United States 110.693 Uruguay Uruguay 2.504
Saint Vincent Saint Vincent 3.369 Venezuela Venezuela 11.454
Vietnam Vietnam 3.723 Kosovo Kosovo 3.368
Mayotte Mayotte 16.493 Zambia Zambia 2.816
Zimbabwe Zimbabwe 2.799

Order of names

Names can be written in different name orders . This makes it complicated for developers to check if a name is valid or not. The order [first name] [last name] is known as the Western order and is usually used in most Western countries (Europe, North and South America, India and Oceania). The order [last name] [first name] is known as the Eastern order and is primarily used in East Asia. Our software can parse all common name orders, salutations and titles.

Types Format Example
Regular names. [first name] [last name] Jennifer Anderson
Names with middle name. [first name] [middle name] [last name] Stephanie Karen Hills
Last name first. [last name], [first name] [middle name] Procházka, Lukáš Michal
Names with salutation and initials. [salutation] [first name] [initial] [last name] Mr Bob S. Samuels
Title with last name first. [title] [last name], [first name] Dr. Jenkins, Philip
Nickname between [], (), {} or "". [first name] [nickname] [last name] Stephanie "DJ" Williams
Cyrillic, Greek and Latin characters. [first name] [last name] Екатерина Иванов

Changelog

We always keep on improving our service. We divided the changelog in a section for the API and for the database. Our API returns the version of the API and database via the response headers. You can use the versions from the response header to programmatically detect if we release a new version.

API
Version Date Changes
1.8 2022-09-18
  • Added status code 404 in case a name can not be parsed.
  • Parse endpoint will always return the validation result even if name could not be parsed.
1.7 2022-03-20
  • Increased the number requests per hour for all subscriptions.
  • Last names that can not be validated will be returned nicely formatted with correct upper and lower case letters.
1.6 2021-03-14
  • Updated ‘generate’ endpoint so each subscription type (including free plan) can receive 25 generated names per request using the 'results' parameter.
  • Add password to the ‘generate’ endpoint so each generated name and email address now also have a strong password that can be used for development databases.
1.5 2021-02-12
  • Added ‘email‘ as a parameter to the name parsing endpoint to extract names from email.
  • Added 'email' object to all response objects including provider and country information.
  • Added fictional email addresses to the random name generator output.
  • Updated ‘account’ endpoint so usage field always has 24 hours and 31 days.
  • Removed the 'gender' endpoint from the API as this is already available in the name parsing endpoint.
  • Moved the 'validation' endpoint to the name parsing endpoint and made it available as an additional parameter.
1.4 2020-11-13
  • Added the name extraction endpoint to the API to extract names from text.
  • Created database with common keywords in every supported language to reduce false possive names for extraction endpoint.
  • Examined and improved complete API to meet strict GDPR regulations.
1.3 2020-09-30
  • All endpoints don't try to parse (obvious) rubbish names anymore.
  • Added additional status codes for when names could not be found (404).
  • Improved the rate limiting functionality excluding error responses.
  • Added additional hourly and daily usage fields to account information endpoint.
  • Parse and Validation endpoints accept different orders for first and last name like: last name, first name first name or last name first name.
1.2 2020-06-01
  • Added rate limiting based upon subscription plan.
  • Improved the name parser so it can detect multiple middle names.
  • Increased accuracy of nationality prediction using new algorithm
  • Updated the structure of the result object to a more logical model.
  • Added support for IP addresses to Country Code using MaxMind GeoLite2.
  • Added Pantheon and IMDB data files for loose and strict validation.
1.1 2019-09-24
  • Fixed salutation breaking after a title.
  • Added the detection of nicknames that are written like: (nickname), [nickname] or "nickname".
  • Added the following endpoints to the API: account information, validation and name generation.
1.0 2019-08-17
  • Released first version of the API.
Database
Version Date Changes
8 2021-01-30
  • Exported 11.371.003 public profiles to rebuilt the first name and last name database resulting in 113 countries.
  • Added PE (Peruvian) last name database.
  • Added 'compact' ASCII column to first name and last name databases for search.
7 2020-10-07
  • Updated countries RU in the gender database.
  • Created a last name table to import all official last names.
  • Added all supported countries to last name database.
  • In the countries RU, PL, CZ the last name also indicates the gender.
  • Updated first name database for countries CA, RU, PL, IT, CH with additional names.
6 2020-08-31
  • Exported 9.252.364 public profiles to rebuilt the first name database resulting in 104 countries.
  • Improved performance of cron jobs that collect public profiles.
  • Fixed the Russian first names entries.
5 2020-05-05
  • Names from unsupported countries are now added and based upon first names from supported countries resulting in 110 countries.
  • Started measuring and tracking nationality prediction performance by using open database with names and countries from 29,216 olympic athletes .
  • Updated country tables with additional country information.
  • Added countries HU, SI, SK, IN, RU and UA.
4 2019-12-26
  • Added column country_rank to name tables to support nationality prediction.
  • Added countries AR, BR, AU, NZ, CZ, ES, FR, GR, PL, TR to the gender database.
3 2019-10-22
  • Updated tables, now including frequency of names.
  • Added additional table for ASCII version of each name.
  • Added countries AT, CA, DK, IT, NO, IE, CH, PT to the gender database.
2 2019-09-02
  • Released first version of the database.
  • Converted whole database to UTF-8 when importing name databases.
  • Added countries NL, SE, DE, FI, BE, US, GB to the gender database.
1 2019-08-17
  • Released first version of the database.