Determine the Surname (Last Name) Position

Uses census first-name / last-name frequencies (see get_census_data()) to decide which token in a name vector is most likely the surname. Tokens are ranked so that names appearing (relatively) more often in the last-name position rank highest; ties break toward higher overall frequency and then later ordinal position.

Usage

determine_surname(x)

Arguments

x

A census-data data.table to evaluate, as produced by get_census_data().

Value

An integer giving the ordinal (1-based position) of the most likely surname. Returns c(0, 0) if x is not a data.table, and c(1, 2) when x has a single row.

Author

mjfii mick.flanigan@gmail.com

Examples

x <- "livingston III,  Mr. MICHAEL JOHN9"
x <- prep_name(x)
x <- strsplit(x, " ")[[1]]
cd <- get_census_data(x)
determine_surname(cd)
#> [1] 1