How to format the order of first/last name and remove prefix and nickname - sql

Question

I have a need to retrieve a hierarchy of managers and the column which stores the manager names for a given person are formatted like this Smith, Mr. William (Bill). I want this output to simply be William Smith. So far I have put this together:
SELECT DISTINCT RIGHT(u.manager, LEN(u.manager)-(1+CHARINDEX(', ', u.manager))) + ' ' +
LEFT(u.manager, CHARINDEX(', ', u.manager) - 1) as ManagerName
FROM Users u
The current result from that query using my example above is Mr. William (Bill) Smith. This CHARINDEX and SUBSTRING stuff always gives me a lot of trouble so I am not really sure what the easiest way to do this is. This is also a one-off, so I am not sure a function would be useful here.

Answer 1

DEMO
SELECT
SUBSTRING(manager,0,CHARINDEX(',', manager)) as surname,
SUBSTRING(manager,CHARINDEX('. ', manager)+2, LEN(manager)-CHARINDEX(' (', manager)+1) as name,
CONCAT(SUBSTRING(manager,CHARINDEX('. ', manager)+2, LEN(manager)-CHARINDEX(' (', manager)+1),
' ',
SUBSTRING(manager,0,CHARINDEX(',', manager))) as 'name surname'
FROM
Users
Result:
+-------------+-----------+--------------+
| surname | name | name surname |
+-------------+-----------+--------------+
Smith William William Smith

Answer 2

I took your query and modified a little bit:
SELECT
---this is the tricky part: inner part finds the first instance of '(' parenthesis
--and substract it from the length of the first name and get only the left part of the first name by subtracting it
CONCAT (
LEFT(t.FirstName, LEN(t.FirstName) - (LEN(t.FirstName) - CHARINDEX('(', t.FirstName) + 1))
,t.LastName
)
FROM (
--basically separating your above syntax to two columns
SELECT RIGHT('Smith, Mr. William (Bill)', LEN('Smith, Mr. William (Bill)') - CHARINDEX('.', 'Smith, Mr. William (Bill)') - 1) AS FirstName
,LEFT('Smith, Mr. William (Bill)', CHARINDEX(', ', 'Smith, Mr. William (Bill)') - 1) AS LastName
) t
Here is the query that should work with your table name and column:
SELECT
---Use case when statement to determine if there are any instances of '(' in the first name
CONCAT (
CASE
WHEN CHARINDEX('(', t.FirstName) > 0
THEN LEFT(t.FirstName, LEN(t.FirstName) - (LEN(t.FirstName) - CHARINDEX('(', t.FirstName) + 1))
ELSE t.FirstName + ' '
END
,t.LastName
)
FROM (
SELECT
RIGHT(u.manager, LEN(u.manager) - CHARINDEX('.', u.manager) - 1) AS FirstName
,LEFT(u.manager, CHARINDEX(', ', u.manager) - 1) AS LastName from Users u
) t

Answer 3

SELECT RIGHT(NameStripped, LEN(NameStripped) - (1 + CHARINDEX(', ', NameStripped))) + ' ' + LEFT(NameStripped, CHARINDEX(', ', NameStripped) - 1) AS ManagerName --Your original code
FROM (
SELECT replace(replace(
LEFT(u.manager, CHARINDEX('(', u.manager) - 2) --Get rid of nickname
, 'Mr. ', ''), 'Ms.', '') AS NameStripped --Get rid of Mr/Ms
from MyTable u) a
This should work - I used the code you posted, but added a subquery to remove the nicknames and prefixes.
Note that you may need to adjust this if a) you have more prefix options than this (in which case you could add additional replaces) and/or b) not everyone in your database has a nickname (in which case you'll want to wrap that part in a case statement, most likely).