the PERSON NAME service

Making sense of names

Names are universal and essential to both inbound and outbound communication. They’re the most common way of identifying people in any human language. They’re also a piece of information that people take personally and expect you to get right.

Yet, names are not as simple as they may seem. It’s common to think that all people have a first and a last name. And that they appear in this order. But different cultures have very different naming practices and for this reason it’s not wise to ask everyone to provide their name in any particular set of structured name fields.

The Confidentify person name service helps you make sense of names, parse them, capitalize them correctly and suggest nicknames.

 

Use cases

The person name service can be used for many purposes, amongst others:

  • Correct capitalization when data is entered in entirely upper or lower case.
  • Separate the non-name parts from the name – such as salutations, academic titles, generational titles and more. 
  • Sorting of name lists based on family names – while ignoring non-sortable parts of the family name such as a prefix (van, von, de, la etc.)
  • Find candidates for alternative names (using nicknames, initials etc.) to use when matching/linking person records.
  • Discover cases where multiple names occur in a single name field.

    



		

				

						

					

		

								

					

		

				

						

							

					

			

							

						

				

			
How do I integrate the service?
		

				

						

					

		

								

					

		

				

						

							

					

			

							

						

				

					

																					

				

				

						

					

		

				

			

							

						

				

					
All services are described via our OpenAPI specification, making it easy to integrate from a variety of clients and languages.

				

				

						

					

		

								

					

		

				

						

							

					

			

							

						

				

					

																					

				

				

						

					

		

				

			

							

						

				

					
Convenient client packages for common programming languages are available via the Confidentify GitHub page.