I'm not sure how to do this exactly with a regex but one could use something like: - 
use strict;

my @names = (
    'Joe John Smith',
    'David George',
    'Emma Harry Sally Martin',
);

foreach (@names) {
    my @w = split /\s/, (/\s+(\w[\w ]{0,18}\w)\s*$/)[0];
    shift @w while @w > 2;
    print "@w\n";
}

[download]
Update: You can replace everything in the foreach scope with: - 
(/\s+(\w[\w ]{0,18}\w)\s*$/)[0] =~ /(\w+\s?\w+)$/g;

[download]

In reply to Re: Stumped by regex by bsdz
in thread Stumped by regex by brickwall

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