You could subsitute out the last Single chatacter with or without a period "."

You also had an anonymous array ref in your @names array. Fixed in the below code. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @names = ( "Mark K.", "Bob H", "Kurt", "Mary Kay K",
"Mary Jo Z.",  "Mary Jo" );

foreach my $name ( @names ) {

  $name =~ s/ [a-zA-Z].?$//;
  print "$name \n";

}

[download]
Prints:
Mark
Bob
Kurt
Mary Kay
Mary Jo
Mary

[download]

In reply to Re: Parsing out first names by awohld
in thread Parsing out first names by Anonymous Monk

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