GREP help with index for name/surname grammatical case system

[VM127878]

Good day. I am trying to make an Index list - surname/name/page. However I cannot add one single name with "add all" function.

In my Lithuanian language, there is a grammatical case system.

NAME SURNAME :

Jonas Jonaitis 

Jono Jonaičio

Jonui Jonaičiui

I would need to highlight every name grammatical case and add it to the index, but the name is the same, only the case is not. And I would have several entries of the same name under "X" letter.

In this example, I would need the grep to find all grammatical cases of Jon* Jonai* (name/surname) and make it the default name case - Jonas Jonaitis. Then also swap to surname/name style.

The final result should look like:

J

Jonaitis Jonas

I don't know how to write this 😞

Do you think this is too much? Should I just highlight every name with different case, and then just edit generated index? I would just need to figure out how to swap name/surname to surname/name.

Thank you, V.

[Eugene Tyson]

If you're only looking to swap the first and last name it's pretty simple
Given names are start of sentences

Find

^(.+?) (.+)
Change to
$2 $1

If it's more complicated than that let us know.

[Eugene Tyson]

Another way I've done it before GREP days 

Find the space 

replace it with a tab

Select the text and convert it to a table
Then swap the columns
Then convert the table back to text

You don't technically need to change the space toa. tab - you can just ty convert to a table and use the space character to invoke the columns and rows etc

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

If searching for all instances of words that start with Jon or Jonai is certain only to return names and nothing else, you can look for 

Jon\l+ Jonai\l+

(\l stands for lower-case letter, + means one or more.)

If that's too wide you can specify the case endings:

Jon(as|o|ui) Jonai(tis|čio|čiui)

To mark up Jonas in your document, you can use this script:

var index = app.documents[0].indexes[0];
if (!index.isValid) {
  index = app.documents[0].indexes.add();
}

app.findGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = 'Jon\\l+ Jonai\\l+';
found = app.documents[0].findGrep();
if (found.length > 0) {
  topic = index.topics.add ('Jonaitis, Jonas');
  for (i = found.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
    topic.pageReferences.add (found[i].insertionPoints[0]);
  }
}

(Edit: Eugene posted while I was typing away)

[Eugene Tyson]

That makes a lot more sense 

[VM127878]

Thank you very much, this is exactly what I was looking for!

Have a lovely day,

V.