$re = '/^[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ\u00f1\u00d1]+(\s*[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ\u00f1\u00d1]*)*[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ\u00f1\u00d1]+$/';
$str = 'Juan Álvarez';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php