# nameable

A library that provides parsing and normalization of people's names.

```ruby
require 'nameable'
n = Nameable::Latin.new.parse('Mr. Chris K Horn Esquire')
puts "#{n.prefix} #{n.first} #{n.middle} #{n.last} #{n.suffix}"
#=> Mr. Chris K Horn Esq.
puts n.to_fullname
#=> Mr. Chris K. Horn, Esq.
n = Nameable::Latin.new('CHRIS', 'HORN')
puts n.to_nameable
#=> Chris Horn
n = Nameable::Latin.new(prefix:'Sir', last:'Horn')
puts n
#=> Sir Horn
```

# Features

Convenience methods:
```ruby
puts Nameable('chris horn, iii')
#=> "Chris Horn, III."
puts Nameable.parse('chris horn, iii')
#=> #<Nameable::Latin:0x007f8470e01b08 @first="Chris", @last="Horn", @middle=nil, @prefix=nil, @suffix="III.">
```
Using a database of first names from the U.S. Social Security Administration, Nameable will make a guess at the gender of a name.

```ruby
Nameable::Latin.new('Chris').gender
#=> :male
Nameable::Latin.new('Janine').female?
#=> true
```
Using a database of last names from the U.S. Census, Nameable will return the ethnicity breakdown as a Hash. 
```ruby
Nameable::Latin.new('Chris', 'Horn').ethnicity
#=> {:rank=>593, :count=>51380, :percent_white=>86.75, :percent_black=>8.31, :percent_asian_pacific_islander=>0.84, :percent_american_indian_alaska_native=>1.16, :percent_two_or_more_races=>1.46, :percent_hispanic=>1.48}
```

# Other uses

I've included a little web service, which should be installed as "nameable_web_service" that requires sinatra.  It's been handy when paired with OpenRefine, if I'm working with a file and I am not going to be parsing with Ruby.  If you're reading this, that's probably not an issue for you, but I do think it's a nice way to show someone how to use OpenRefine in a more advanced way.

# Inspiration

By inspiration, I should really say "other projects from which I yanked their code, ideas, examples and data." At worst I'll make sure the other projects I looked at and borrowed from are credited here.

# References

* [Open Refine](http://openrefine.org/) formerly [Google Refine](https://code.google.com/p/google-refine/)
* [Help with splitting names](http://www.onlineaspect.com/2009/08/17/splitting-names/)
* [First Names from the U.S. SSA](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html)
* [Last Names from the Census](http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html)
* [Data Science Toolkit](https://github.com/petewarden/dstk)
* [Addressable](https://github.com/sporkmonger/addressable)

# Issues

Thus far I've gone long stretches where this project did exactly what I needed it to, until it did not.  I don't use it to validate or massage names with code connected to some kind of UI, I use it to clean up names I am parsing in volume.  Hopefully I'm balancing speed and quality.  Anything you don't like, change, you can have the commit bit easy-peasy.

The first time an instance of Nameable uses the gender method, the database of first names shipped with the gem will be parsed.  The same is true for the last name data which is quite a bit larger.  They aren't huge, and it only happens the first time, which is why I opted to leave the data in the gem, and not split it up into a different thing.  If you hate that more than you hate gems that require extra steps to be useable let me know.

Oh, and github, pull request, workflow, yada yada.

-chorn