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 139 countries

In order to properly parse names, our service uses an huge database with 2.208.942 first names and 6.119.869 last names from 139 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	14.007		Afghanistan	8.414
	Albania	4.058		Armenia	1.901
	Angola	4.996		Argentina	24.632
	Austria	17.405		Australia	27.945
	Azerbaijan	3.003		Bosnia and Herzegovina	5.021
	Bangladesh	11.283		Belgium	32.080
	Burkina Faso	5.300		Bulgaria	7.628
	Bahrain	2.066		Benin	3.384
	Bermuda	4.634		Bolivia	5.452
	Brazil	114.619		Bahamas	2.978
	Belarus	3.352		Belize	2.803
	Canada	37.541		Congo	4.962
	Republic of the Congo	2.961		Switzerland	60.225
	Ivory Coast	4.883		Chile	11.293
	Cameroon	8.608		China	13.108
	Colombia	21.113		Costa Rica	7.886
	Cuba	3.873		Cape Verde	3.283
	Cyprus	3.641		Czech Republic	10.340
	Germany	43.936		Denmark	131.474
	Dominican Republic	10.003		Algeria	7.185
	Ecuador	10.414		Estonia	2.648
	Egypt	10.120		Spain	70.160
	Ethiopia	3.917		Finland	8.371
	France	52.657		United Kingdom	69.382
	Georgia	6.404		Ghana	8.374
	Guinea	2.562		Greece	7.539
	Guatemala	8.671		Hong Kong	6.555
	Honduras	6.860		Croatia	3.929
	Haiti	3.417		Hungary	10.306
	Indonesia	29.015		Ireland	13.424
	Israel	5.208		India	35.503
	Iraq	7.018		Iran	6.548
	Iceland	2.337		Italy	34.082
	Jersey	6.087		Jamaica	16.066
	Jordan	3.568		Japan	11.490
	Kenya	9.955		South Korea	7.911
	Kuwait	4.456		Kazakhstan	3.890
	Lebanon	4.883		Sri Lanka	4.013
	Liberia	9.186		Lithuania	2.094
	Luxembourg	6.174		Latvia	2.563
	Libya	2.386		Morocco	5.924
	Moldova	1.722		Macedonia	2.971
	Mali	2.303		Myanmar [Burma]	2.300
	Malta	2.263		Mexico	71.858
	Malaysia	13.136		Mozambique	3.158
	Nigeria	16.310		Nicaragua	5.981
	Netherlands	31.904		Norway	32.946
	Nepal	6.534		New Zealand	9.612
	Oman	3.827		Panama	6.842
	Peru	12.281		Papua New Guinea	2.887
	Philippines	21.399		Pakistan	12.909
	Poland	54.564		Palestine	2.609
	Portugal	19.947		Paraguay	6.738
	Qatar	5.245		Romania	9.419
	Serbia	4.261		Russia	39.411
	Rwanda	1.972		Saudi Arabia	8.615
	Sudan	3.442		Sweden	37.432
	Singapore	13.264		Slovenia	10.412
	Slovakia	5.037		Senegal	3.898
	Somalia	3.160		El Salvador	5.440
	Syria	4.021		Thailand	8.626
	Tunisia	3.255		Turkey	170.335
	Trinidad and Tobago	3.086		Taiwan	5.209
	Tanzania	4.872		Ukraine	9.610
	Uganda	5.850		United States	127.159
	Uruguay	4.946		Uzbekistan	2.088
	Saint Vincent	4.727		Venezuela	23.682
	Vietnam	5.101		Kosovo	4.918
	Mayotte	22.158		Zambia	4.123
	Zimbabwe	3.828

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). Names can have multiple first names and multiple last names . This is common in Spanish-speaking countries, Brazil and Portugal. 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
First name only	[first name]	Yumeng
Last name only	[last name]	Mountbatten-Windsor
Regular names	[first name] [last name]	Jennifer Anderson
Names with middle name	[first name] [middle name] [last name]	Stephanie Karen Hills
Double (Spanish) last names	[first name] [last name] [last name]	José Rodríguez Zapatero
Last name first followed by 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
2.1	2023-01-04	Rewrote complete structure of project making it more efficient to run and more than 55% faster. Implemented unit test that automatically tests 57 different names and styles to prevent errors. Fixed initials bug: When initials and a name where given (e.g.: W.P. Williams) the name was mistaken for the first name instead of the last name. Fixed nickname bug: Nickname can now also consist out of numbers (e.g.: Phill Miller (1st rooster)). Fixed special letters bug: Alle names can now also include letters like ë. ø and û (e.g.: Daniël Koster). Fixed name order bug: By using comma's as a separation character the order of names can differ (e.g.: Miller, Walter M., Jr.) Fixed lastname bug: Lastnames can now also be just 2 characters which is very common is some countries (e.g.: Jack Ma). Improved the alternative countries of the first and middle-names. Improved parsing of the lastname which now supports the use of multiple lastnames. This is common in Spanish-speaking countries (e.g. José Rodríguez Zapatero) and in some countries with marriage. Added additional 'lastnames' object containing the individual last names detected in the complete lastname. Improved nationality prediction by using the improved lastname information. Improved salutation. Now supporting various salutations for 9 languages including different writing styles (e.g. Mr. Jack Dorsey or Mr Jack Dorsey). Improved name generation in Spanish-speaking countries and countries where it is common to have two last names. Improved country detection using the detected country from firstname, lastname and parsed lastname if lastname had more than one name.
2.0	2022-12-16	Extended the name parsing endpoint with "typo correction". For any misspelled first name, a list of alternative, correct names is returned. Created a huge database with 20 million possible common spelling mistakes and typos for all first names. For example "Chriatian" should be "Christian". Implemented a typo generator for names that takes in a name and creates hundreds of possible, logical spelling mistakes for it. The error handling of the API has been improved, making it easier to fix errors. Rewrote all code to strict type to prevent run-time errors and have earlier detection of errors. Fixed validation bug, a name should now at least contain an existing firstname and lastname is optional when using loose validation.
1.9	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
10	2023-01-14	Exported 11.371.003 public profiles to rebuild the first name and last name database resulting in 113 countries. Added MX (Mexico) with first name and last name database.
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.