Today, we’ll walk through 3 simple regex methods to split names into first and last names in a dataframe. We’ll work with roster data for the ’96 Seattle SuperSonics, one of my all-time favorite teams. Led by Payton, Kemp, Schrempf and coach George Karl, they reached the Finals that year, losing to the Bulls in 6.
We’ll use BeautifulSoup to scrape roster data from Basketball Reference after a search for Seattle SuperSonics and convert to a dataframe. Once we have our players, we’ll split player names into first and last names using 3 regex methods, walking through the regex logic and methodology in each.
This simple exercise could be useful for anyone working with string name fields in, for example, customer, applicant, or patient data where first and last names are combined. A similar logic can be used for any string fields that need to be separated (e.g., countries and their capitals). Let’s dive in.
If there’s something you’d like to explore, give us a shout!
C.E.F.H.,
Rish
