Get first word in string php the_title WordPress

Question

I'm trying to shorten a wordpress title to just the first word. For a page named "John Doe" I want to have a sub title somewhere on the page that says "About John" so I want to just get the first word from the title.

Is there a way to do this with PHP?

Thanks!

UPDATE:
Thanks for your answers! I tried the following code but it doesn't seem to be working. It still echoes the full title. Any suggestions?

<?php   
   $title = the_title();
   $names = explode(' ', $title);
   echo $names[0];
?>

Solution 1

this is very easy:

<?php
$title = get_the_title(); // This must be!, because this is the return - the_title would be echo
$title_array = explode(' ', $title);
$first_word = $title_array[0];

echo $first_word;
?>

or

<?php
$title = current(explode(' ', get_the_title()));

echo $title;
?>

untested, but should work :)

Hope this is helpful :)

Solution 2

$first_word = current(explode(' ', $title  ));

or in your template file

<?php echo current(explode(' ', $title  )) ?>

explode by space and get first element in resulting array

Solution 3

list($first_word) = explode(' ',$mystring);