Capitalize Names

The request this time is for some way to quickly capitalize the names in the database, so I created a SQL function that can be used in nearly any context to capitalize a string passed to it. This function will upper-case the first letter of each word of the string passed to it, so for example: "this is bad capitalization" will become "This Is Bad Capitalization" (which, ironically, it isn't anymore). Note that it will only affect the first letter, so for names like "mcDonald" it will properly ignore the rest of the name (i.e. "McDonald"); also it will capitalize every word, so it might mess up names like "von Richtofen" which should have a proper non-capitalized word.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.cust_funct_capitalize (@name VARCHAR(MAX))
RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX)

AS

BEGIN
DECLARE @firstletter VARCHAR(10), @restofname VARCHAR(MAX), @partofname VARCHAR(MAX),@totalname VARCHAR(MAX)

IF (CHARINDEX(' ',@name)>0)
BEGIN
SET @firstletter=LEFT(@name,1)
SET @restofname=SUBSTRING(@name,2,CHARINDEX(' ',@name)-2)
SET @partofname=SUBSTRING(@name,CHARINDEX(' ',@name)+1,LEN(@name))
SET @totalname=UPPER(@firstletter)+@restofname+' '
WHILE LEN(@partofname)>0
BEGIN
SET @firstletter=LEFT(@partofname,1)
IF (CHARINDEX(' ',@partofname)>0)
BEGIN
SET @restofname=SUBSTRING(@partofname,2,CHARINDEX(' ',@partofname)-2)
SET @partofname=SUBSTRING(@partofname,CHARINDEX(' ',@partofname)+1,LEN(@partofname))
END
ELSE
BEGIN
SET @restofname=SUBSTRING(@partofname,2,LEN(@partofname))
SET @partofname=''
END
SET @totalname=@totalname+UPPER(@firstletter)+@restofname+' '
END
END
ELSE
BEGIN
SET @firstletter=LEFT(@name,1)
SET @restofname=SUBSTRING(@name,2,LEN(@name))
SET @totalname=UPPER(@firstletter)+@restofname
END

SET @totalname=RTRIM(@totalname)

RETURN @totalname
END

As an example of how this is designed to be used:

UPDATE core_person
SET first_name=dbo.cust_funct_capitalize(first_name)