getting first and last name from emails in a list

[sfullman]

due to poor data management from the last party, I have a bunch of emails but no first and last name, here is an example:

[e-mail]

(I have changed the email to hide the name)

the first and last name is obvious to you and me. Anyone know of or have an email parser for first,middle, and last name? I assume this would reference a mySQL table of first names and maybe last names (which I have). Please help! I have re-invented so many wheels already.

[bradgrafelman]

Just to make sure I'm understanding your question... you're wanting to compare a given e-mail address to a SQL table of first and last names that you have to see if there is a possible match? That should be as easy as:

WHERE INSTR( CONCAT(firstName, lastName), '[e-mail]') > 0

However, I have to wonder how useful such a process would even be. For example, maybe someone in your database is actually named John Doe, but what if I was just feeling humorous back when I first created my e-mail and decided to use [e-mail] ?

[Bonesnap]

I'm curious how emails are constructed if two or more people have the same name, or is this not an issue? Also, is the domain always the same? Is there the possibility that a domain may match someone's name, whether it be first or last?

[laserlight]

sfullman wrote:

I have a bunch of emails but no first and last name

So the email addresses are guaranteed to be in the format <first_name><last_name>@<mailbox>? Even so, the problem with names is that they are so diverse. The assumption that people will have both first and last names does not hold true for many, many people.

[Weedpacket]

[e-mail]

Yep, obvious 🙂

[sfullman]

Hey i never said it would be perfect, and I think last names should be considered here. It would still need human review,

bradgafelman, your query would not work because it fully depends on last names, AND sometimes there is an _ and sometimes a - and etc. Id' be happy to get a rough approximation and then send these 8000 emails to human review from there.

and yes it's quite possible that "John Doe" is really Susan McGillicuddy, but hey that's another thing to deal with..