name-capitalize

Lightweight, zero-dependency utility for smart capitalization of person names. Handles particles (de, van, von…), hyphenated names, apostrophes, and Unicode characters.

Looking for the legacy version? See the v1 branch for Node 16 / Angular 12 compatibility (npm install name-capitalize@legacy).

Install

npm install name-capitalize

Requires Node 18 or higher.

Usage

import { capitalizeName } from 'name-capitalize';

capitalizeName('JUAN DE LA MAZA')         // → 'Juan de la Maza'
capitalizeName('ludwig van beethoven')    // → 'Ludwig van Beethoven'
capitalizeName("bernardo o'higgins")      // → "Bernardo O'Higgins"
capitalizeName('JEAN-PIERRE DUPONT')      // → 'Jean-Pierre Dupont'
capitalizeName('gabriel garcía márquez')  // → 'Gabriel García Márquez'

Behavior

• Particles (de, del, van, von, di, da, bin…) stay lowercase unless they are the first word.
• Multi-word particles (van der, de la, de los…) are handled as a unit.
• Words after a hyphen or apostrophe are always capitalized (Jean-Pierre, O'Higgins).
• Unicode letters are handled natively (Ñ, Ö, Ş, Å…).
• Leading/trailing whitespace is trimmed.
• Returns an empty string for empty, whitespace-only, or non-string input.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT © Gabriel Galilea