tympanum | Typescript library for multidimensional convex hulling

Your original pattern didn't work because the subpattern [A-Za-z]+ doesn't match spaces, and therefore will only match a single word.

You can use the following pattern to match any number of words (other than 0) after the first, within double quotes:

"[A-Za-z]+ ([A-Za-z ]+)" https://regex101.com/r/p6ET3I/1

https://regex101.com/r/p6ET3I/2

This is a relatively simple, but imperfect, solution. It will also match trailing spaces, or just one or more spaces after the first word even if a second word doesn't exist. "Eulamprus " for example will successfully match the pattern, and return 5 spaces. You should only use this pattern if you trust your data to be properly formatted.

A more reliable approach would be the following:

"[A-Za-z]+ ([A-Za-z]+(?: [A-Za-z]+)*)"

https://regex101.com/r/p6ET3I/3

This pattern will capture one word (following the first), followed by any number of addition words (including 0), separated by spaces.

However, from what I remember from biology class, species are only ever comprised of one or two names, and never capitalized. The following pattern will reflect this format:

"[A-Za-z]+ ([a-z]+(?: [a-z]+)?)"

https://regex101.com/r/p6ET3I/4