Yes, indeed, the human eye does an awfully good job of that. Your solution is what we did as well.

I was commenting (indirectly) on the statement of "a database of probable first and last names". I'm not sure how such a database would be of value.

>In our algoritm we had a switch which allowed to indicate if the first name comes first or second. E.g. in Lee Nelson it could be either way, but usually the whole file uses one pattern and a human eye can recognise it.
>
>>List or probable first/last names is problematic, as many names can be both ... Dennis, Mitchell, Paul, John, Lee, Nelson, James, and the list goes on and on.
>>
>>It gets much worse when your list includes nationalities where the family name comes first.
>>
>>>>Does anyone have a routine to clean up names for mailing?
>>>>
>>>>I have names like 'SMITH E ROBBIE & JONES REBECCA L' would like it to read 'Robbie Smith & Rebecca Jones' or something similar. does anyone have a routine written to clean up names?
>>>>
>>>
>>>PROPER() would do a bit of it. The rest would require (as a starting point) a database of probable first and last names :-(