Split Full Names Into First and Last

How it works

1. 1Upload your file and tell us which column holds the names.
2. 2We split the ones we understand — including “Smith, John”, “Dr. Anne Smith III” and “Anne-Marie van der Berg”.
3. 3Names we cannot split confidently keep their original value and go to Needs Review with the reason.
4. 4Download the file with the new columns added.

When people use this

• —A mailing list that needs a first name for the greeting
• —An import that requires first and last name as separate fields
• —A CRM that will not accept a single full-name field

Supported formats

This tool accepts .csv, .tsv, .xlsx, .xls. Up to 10MB and 50,000 rows without an account. We work out the encoding and the separator from the file itself, so a semicolon-separated export or one saved in a non-UTF-8 encoding opens correctly rather than as a single column of nonsense.

Questions

What about names it cannot split?

It flags them rather than guessing. A single name, a name with four parts and no particle to anchor the surname, or two people in one cell all go to Needs Review with the original value intact. Being wrong on a few percent of a mailing list, silently, is worse than asking you to look at them.

Does it handle prefixes and suffixes?

Yes — Dr, Prof, Mrs and the rest come off the front, and Jr, III, PhD and so on come off the back, so neither ends up as a middle name.

What happens to my file?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed, and deleted automatically - within 24 hours for anonymous use. We never use anyone’s spreadsheet data to train models. You can delete a job and its files at any time from the job page.

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