If you're processing a list of upper-cased names and want to turn them into "properly" cased names, why not just do that?

See also Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.

It simply does not work correctly:

#30 There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly.

X:\>perl oops.pl
'JAMES SMITH-JONES' -> 'James Smith-Jones''BOB SMITH-SMYTHE-SMITH' -> 
+'Bob Smith
-Smythe-Smith''J. JONAH JAMESON' -> 'J. Jonah Jameson''BILLY BOB THORN
+TON' -> 'B
illy Bob Thornton''LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN' -> 'Ludwig Van Beethoven'
X:\>type oops.pl
my @names = (
   'JAMES SMITH-JONES',
   'BOB SMITH-SMYTHE-SMITH',
   'J. JONAH JAMESON',
   'BILLY BOB THORNTON',
   'LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN',
   );
 ;;
 for my $name (@names) {
   printf qq{'$name' -> };
   $name =~ s{ \b ([[:upper:]]+) \b }{\u\L$1}xmsg;
   print qq{'$name'};
   }
X:\>
[download]

Ol' Ludwig needs a lower case 'v' in his name. Quoting Wikipedia:

The prefix van to the surname "Beethoven" reflects the Flemish origins of the family; the surname suggests that "at some stage they lived at or near a beet-farm".

Alexander