I guess that would depend on what you consider a "last name" or a "middle name"
A typical "western" name has 3 parts, like your example. However there are many names like "van der Plaats" or "de la Hoya" that are not so easy to detect based simply on what space to split the name at. What about people with more than 1 middle name? Nearly all of my kids have 2 middle names (one derived somehow from their grandparents, the other just sounded good.) So with a name like "Jeremy Alexander Martin von Schleffler" (not a real name as far as I know) Where do the middle names end and where does the last name begin? Any way, extracting substrings: use the SUBSTRING() function. That is, once you decide where you want to split the string..... ;-) All of the MySQL string functions are documented here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/String_functions.html Shawn Green Database Administrator Unimin Corporation - Spruce Pine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 09/08/2004 09:35:07 AM: > How can I extract a middle segment of text in mySQL. For example a > column contains this string: 'William Walker Jones'. I need to > split this into the first, middle, and last names. I can easily > extract the first and last names but how do I extract the Middle name?
