Regex for Surnames

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Regex for Surnames by shenme (Priest) on Aug 29, 2004 at 00:25 UTC
Some example code for Lingua::EN::NameParse `$correct_case = &case_surname("DE SILVA-MACNAY",$lc_prefix); # De Silv +a-MacNay` [download] would seem to agree, but perhaps you should check out the complete description of that module?	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Regex for Surnames by guha (Priest) on Aug 29, 2004 at 00:29 UTC
I think it is a little bit more complicated than that. What about Carolina Klüft, our heptathlon champion from the Olympic Games and what about IBM is that a surname?	[reply]
Re: Regex for Surnames by fokat (Deacon) on Aug 29, 2004 at 02:06 UTC
I hope that among the 26 letters of the alphabet you're referring to, is the `ñ`... My surname is `Muñoz`, and frankly I'm quite tired of being `Mu#oz`, `Munoz` or even `Mu_oz`. Also, you have to think about `ü` and other fancy characters. Best regards -lem, but some call me fokat	[reply]
Re^2: Regex for Surnames by Skeeve (Parson) on Aug 29, 2004 at 08:11 UTC
Remember not to put a minimal length > 1 on Surnames. I've been told, when I suggested a minimal length of 2, that there is a chinese colleague who's surname is X.	[reply]
Re^2: Regex for Surnames by Skeeve (Parson) on Aug 29, 2004 at 08:09 UTC
Strange... I thought it would be Muñoz ;-)	[reply]
Re: Regex for Surnames by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Aug 29, 2004 at 00:45 UTC
Then there's O'Brian etc Dave.	[reply]
Re: Regex for Surnames by CountZero (Bishop) on Aug 29, 2004 at 12:09 UTC
And we should not forget the Turkish, Russian, Greek, Arabs, Finnish, Icelandic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, ... It is not without reason Unicode was invented! CountZero "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law	[reply]
Re: Regex for Surnames by ambrus (Abbot) on Aug 29, 2004 at 11:48 UTC
I'd think that a surname could contain an apostrophe (') too. Thus, you might want something like `param("surname")=~/^[\pL\- '.]+$/ and $surname = $1;` [download] Update there are surnames with dots too, so I've added it too.	[reply] [d/l]