Question

I have a column that has data stored in full name format, for example:

Tom Smith

Andrew Smith

Is there a function (or combination of functions) I can use to turn this into the following:

T. Smith

A. Smith

Answer 1

You should be storing first name and last name separately. In the meantime:

SELECT CASE WHEN FullName LIKE '% %' THEN 
  LEFT(FullName, 1) + '.' + SUBSTRING(FullName, CHARINDEX(' ', FullName), 255)
    ELSE FullName END
  FROM dbo.table;

Another alternative:

SELECT COALESCE(LEFT(FullName, 1) 
  + '.' + SUBSTRING(FullName, NULLIF(CHARINDEX(' ', FullName), 0), 255), 
  FullName)
FROM dbo.table;

Both of these deal with single-word names like Prince or Madonna – but they won’t properly handle cases where you have middle names. The problem in that case will be:

John Wayne Bobbitt
Billy Ray Cyrus
Lisa Van der Wal
Lee Harvey Oswald
Dennis Moseley Williams
James de Caan

How do you determine which of those are middle names and which have multi-word last names? If you’re dealing with this situation, start shaking your fists harder.