> but is there a "better" way to do it?

you could start with two input fields instead trying to parse one.

Do you know the famous author "Orson Scott Card"?

Whenever I stumble over him, my neural parser is puzzling again, to which name category the "Scott" belongs.

(I've looked it up already, every time...)

And names can get much harder than this ... see also Names_of_Sun_Yat-sen

> The obvious problem is that it fails with extended characters such as Zoë.

Well, the obvious issue is encoding

Could be your HTML/HTTP settings or your script, or both.

Unicode rulez...

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery

In reply to Re: Split first and last names by LanX
in thread Split first and last names by Bod

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