Regex for names with special characters (Unicode)

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Try the following regular expression:

^(?:[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}]+\s[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}]+\s?)+$

In PHP this translates to:

if (preg_match('~^(?:[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}]+\s[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}]+\s?)+$~u', $name) > 0)
{
    // valid
}

You should read it like this:

^   # start of subject
    (?:     # match this:
        [           # match a:
            \p{L}       # Unicode letter, or
            \p{Mn}      # Unicode accents, or
            \p{Pd}      # Unicode hyphens, or
            \'          # single quote, or
            \x{2019}    # single quote (alternative)
        ]+              # one or more times
        \s          # any kind of space
        [               #match a:
            \p{L}       # Unicode letter, or
            \p{Mn}      # Unicode accents, or
            \p{Pd}      # Unicode hyphens, or
            \'          # single quote, or
            \x{2019}    # single quote (alternative)
        ]+              # one or more times
        \s?         # any kind of space (0 or more times)
    )+      # one or more times
$   # end of subject

I honestly don’t know how to port this to Javascript, I’m not even sure Javascript supports Unicode properties but in PHP PCRE this seems to work flawlessly @ IDEOne.com:

$names = array
(
    'Alix',
    'André Svenson',
    'H4nn3 Andersen',
    'Hans',
    'John Elkjærd',
    'Kristoffer la Cour',
    'Marco d\'Almeida',
    'Martin Henriksen!',
);

foreach ($names as $name)
{
    echo sprintf('%s is %s' . "\n", $name, (preg_match('~^(?:[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}]+\s[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}]+\s?)+$~u', $name) > 0) ? 'valid' : 'invalid');
}

I’m sorry I can’t help you regarding the Javascript part but probably someone here will.

Validates:

  • John Elkjærd
  • André Svenson
  • Marco d’Almeida
  • Kristoffer la Cour

Invalidates:

  • Hans
  • H4nn3 Andersen
  • Martin Henriksen!

To replace invalid characters, though I’m not sure why you need this, you just need to change it slightly:

$name = preg_replace('~[^\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Pd}\'\x{2019}\s]~u', '$1', $name);

Examples:

  • H4nn3 Andersen -> Hnn Andersen
  • Martin Henriksen! -> Martin Henriksen

Note that you always need to use the u modifier.

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