Shortening full name down so Surname is only first letter

Question

After having read a few questions already asked and checking a few other sites I'm still no further forward in finding a simple way to take a full name like say "Jake Whiteman" and trimming it down so that it would be shown on the web page as "Jake W." obviously without the speech marks round it just so there isn't any confusion there.

Anyone have any idea how to do it? I'm sure its probably just a matter of finding the white space and then trimming down the surname, I just can't seem to find a way of doing it.

Thanks in advance!

[Assuming that everyone has a forename and surname is incorrect](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/). — Raedwald, Oct 01 '19 at 10:44
See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1122328/first-name-middle-name-last-name-why-not-full-name — Raedwald, Oct 01 '19 at 10:45

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '12 at 02:54

7

$names = explode( " ", $name );
echo $names[0]." ".$names[1][0];

answered Jul 13 '12 at 02:54

sean

3,955
21
28

Probably irrelevant, but what about Shamus O'Callaghan? – Josh Jul 13 '12 at 03:50
That will still work, although it will look awkward, it is more of a edge case in my opinion that is up to the OP whether he needs to check for it or not. – sean Jul 13 '12 at 03:52
@Josh Irish huh? :D – talha2k Jul 07 '20 at 05:39

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 13 '12 at 03:03

You can use this code. This will work for 3 worded names where assuming that the second word is the middle name, only the last name will be truncated.

<?php

$name = "Jake Awesome Whiteman";
$separate = explode(" ", $name);
$last = array_pop($separate);

echo implode(' ', $separate)." ".$last[0].".";

?>

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 13 '12 at 02:56

Assuming they're always of the format "[Other Names] LastName", such that the last word is always the last name, you can split it into tokens by the delimeter [space] by the php function explode() (http://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php)

// Given
$name = "Jake Whiteman";

// Process
// Tokenize, getting separate names
$names = explode(' ', $name);
// Pop last name into variable $last_name, keep remaining names in $names
$last_name = array_pop($names);
// Get last initial
$last_initial = $last_name[0];

// Put first names back together
$beginning = implode(' ', $names);
$full_name = $beginning.' '.$last_initial.'.';

You can put this all together in a function:

function nameWithLastInitial($name) {
    $names = explode(' ', $name);
    $last_name = array_pop($names);
    $last_initial = $last_name[0];
    return implode(' ', $names).' '.$last_initial.'.';
}
$name = "Jake Whiteman";
echo nameWithLastInitial($name); // Should print 'Jake W.'

Still makes quite a few assumptions about string format and array lengths :). Robustness is only useful relative to need. If you can assume a simpler solution, go for it, it will usually have better performance anyway. — garromark, Jul 13 '12 at 02:59

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 13 '12 at 02:56

1

$name = "Jake Whiteman";
$names = explode(' ', $name); //$names[0] = "Jake", $names[1] = "Whiteman"
echo $names[0]." ".substr($names[1], 0,1).".";

answered Jul 13 '12 at 02:56

nine7ySix

486
2
13

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 06 '16 at 13:24

this would be helpful when only first name and user enter multiple name

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<?php

$userName = "Jakeds hfg gsd";
if(preg_match('/\s/',$userName)) {
$separate = explode(" ", $userName);
$last = array_pop($separate);
$first = mb_strimwidth($separate[0], 0 , 15);
echo $first." ".$last[0].".";
} else {
$first = mb_strimwidth($userName, 0 , 15);
echo $first;
}

//echo $first." ".$last[0].".";

?>
</body>
</html>

Shortening full name down so Surname is only first letter

5 Answers5