AMPScript issues with ProperCase() and any alternatives

Question

SF documentation says ProperCase(string) Returns the specified string with the initial letter of each word capitalized. We had some bad data collection practices existed in our previous CRM implementations in collecting names from prospects, and now have to fix these data problems at the source and meanwhile employ some scriptable ways to address the problem- like using ProperCase() in our marketing cloud email sends.

After doing some tests of my own, found out that my AMPScript with ProperCase() does help to solve to a large portion of our data, however, does not cater as a single solution. As for certain names like below, we do not want ProperCase() to act.

• McKay / McDonald
• De-Wei / Marie-Helene
• O'Neill / O'Grady
• Frédéric

And this is the case with Excel as well, wanted to see if we can do something at an AMPScript level or need to pursue some custom implementation with new business rules on how to treat names in Salesforce to address this.

Answer 1

You could use additional ampscript to exclude the names you don't want Propercase to run on. Something like:

var @name

IF IndexOf(lowercase(@name), "mc") > 0 OR IndexOf(lowercase(@name), "-") > 0 OR IndexOf(lowercase(@name), "\'") > 0 THEN
    SET @name = @name
ELSE
    SET @name = ProperCase(@name)
ENDIF

It's rough but should give you something to work with.