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 141 countries

In order to properly parse names, our service uses an huge database with 2.130.612 first names and 6.036.241 last names from 141 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 13.728 Afghanistan Afghanistan 8.279
Albania Albania 3.963 Armenia Armenia 1.862
Angola Angola 4.872 Argentina Argentina 24.009
Austria Austria 17.164 Australia Australia 27.319
Azerbaijan Azerbaijan 2.904 Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina 4.899
Bangladesh Bangladesh 11.070 Belgium Belgium 31.646
Burkina Faso Burkina Faso 5.191 Bulgaria Bulgaria 7.482
Bahrain Bahrain 2.020 Benin Benin 3.299
Bermuda Bermuda 4.508 Bolivia Bolivia 5.327
Brazil Brazil 114.047 Bahamas Bahamas 2.927
Belarus Belarus 3.276 Belize Belize 2.739
Canada Canada 36.713 Congo Congo 4.880
Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo 2.899 Switzerland Switzerland 59.994
Ivory Coast Ivory Coast 4.769 Chile Chile 10.889
Cameroon Cameroon 8.417 China China 12.313
Colombia Colombia 20.495 Costa Rica Costa Rica 7.649
Cuba Cuba 3.593 Cape Verde Cape Verde 3.245
Cyprus Cyprus 3.543 Czech Republic Czech Republic 10.048
Germany Germany 43.054 Denmark Denmark 131.398
Dominican Republic Dominican Republic 9.822 Algeria Algeria 6.955
Ecuador Ecuador 10.133 Estonia Estonia 2.588
Egypt Egypt 9.874 Spain Spain 69.216
Ethiopia Ethiopia 3.826 Finland Finland 8.068
France France 51.911 United Kingdom United Kingdom 67.971
Georgia Georgia 6.292 Ghana Ghana 8.199
Guinea Guinea 2.512 Greece Greece 7.308
Guatemala Guatemala 8.481 Hong Kong Hong Kong 6.203
Honduras Honduras 6.742 Croatia Croatia 3.761
Haiti Haiti 3.341 Hungary Hungary 9.953
Indonesia Indonesia 28.466 Ireland Ireland 13.026
Israel Israel 5.076 India India 34.949
Iraq Iraq 6.811 Iran Iran 6.360
Iceland Iceland 2.236 Italy Italy 33.502
Jersey Jersey 5.967 Jamaica Jamaica 15.708
Jordan Jordan 3.470 Japan Japan 11.090
Kenya Kenya 9.745 Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyzstan 2.522
South Korea South Korea 7.645 Kuwait Kuwait 4.348
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan 3.793 Lebanon Lebanon 4.783
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka 3.921 Liberia Liberia 8.997
Lithuania Lithuania 2.021 Luxembourg Luxembourg 6.024
Latvia Latvia 2.453 Libya Libya 2.284
Morocco Morocco 5.719 Moldova Moldova 1.669
Montenegro Montenegro 1.953 Macedonia Macedonia 2.904
Mali Mali 2.265 Myanmar [Burma] Myanmar [Burma] 2.203
Malta Malta 2.223 Mexico Mexico 29.127
Malaysia Malaysia 12.822 Mozambique Mozambique 3.095
Nigeria Nigeria 15.958 Nicaragua Nicaragua 5.770
Netherlands Netherlands 31.084 Norway Norway 32.817
Nepal Nepal 6.410 New Zealand New Zealand 9.407
Oman Oman 3.720 Panama Panama 6.766
Peru Peru 11.898 Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea 2.817
Philippines Philippines 21.017 Pakistan Pakistan 12.608
Poland Poland 54.325 Palestine Palestine 2.550
Portugal Portugal 19.674 Paraguay Paraguay 6.538
Qatar Qatar 5.146 Romania Romania 9.089
Serbia Serbia 4.061 Russia Russia 39.061
Rwanda Rwanda 1.915 Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia 8.401
Sudan Sudan 3.346 Sweden Sweden 37.200
Singapore Singapore 12.830 Slovenia Slovenia 10.323
Slovakia Slovakia 4.886 Senegal Senegal 3.740
Somalia Somalia 3.101 El Salvador El Salvador 5.311
Syria Syria 3.880 Thailand Thailand 8.286
Tunisia Tunisia 3.156 Turkey Turkey 170.002
Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago 3.039 Taiwan Taiwan 4.880
Tanzania Tanzania 4.786 Ukraine Ukraine 9.442
Uganda Uganda 5.654 United States United States 125.484
Uruguay Uruguay 4.751 Uzbekistan Uzbekistan 2.028
Saint Vincent Saint Vincent 4.653 Venezuela Venezuela 23.248
Vietnam Vietnam 4.801 Kosovo Kosovo 4.812
Mayotte Mayotte 21.697 Zambia Zambia 4.039
Zimbabwe Zimbabwe 3.711

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
1.81 2022-10-25
  • Improved structure of response so that it is consistent for all endpoints.
  • Fixed bug in parsing of email addresses.
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
9 2022-10-23
  • Exported 25.388.576 public profiles to rebuild the first name and last name database resulting in 141 countries.
8 2021-01-30
  • Exported 11.371.003 public profiles to rebuild 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 rebuild 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.