Count Bigrams independently of order of appearance - r

Question

I´m trying to count bigrams independently of order like 'John Doe' and 'Doe John' should be counted together as 2.
Already tried some examples using text mining such as those provided on https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/text-mining-with/9781491981641/ch04.html but couldn´t find any counting that ignores order of appearance.
library('widyr')
word_pairs <- austen_section_words %>%
pairwise_count(word, section, sort = TRUE)
word_pairs
It counts separated like this:
<chr> <chr> <dbl>
1 darcy elizabeth 144
2 elizabeth darcy 144
It should look like this:
item1 item2 n
<chr> <chr> <dbl>
1 darcy elizabeth 288
Thanks if anyone can help me.

Answer 1

This code works. There is probably something more efficient out there though.
# Create sample dataframe
df <- data.frame(name = c('darcy elizabeth', 'elizabeth darcy', 'John Doe', 'Doe John', 'Steve Smith'))
# Break out first and last names
library(stringr)
df$first <- word(df$name,1); df$second <- word(df$name,2);
# Reorder alphabetically
df$a <- ifelse(df$first<df$second, df$first, df$second); df$b <- ifelse(df$first>df$second, df$first, df$second)
library(dplyr)
summarize(group_by(df, a, b), n())
# Yields
# a b `n()`
# <chr> <chr> <int>
#1 darcy elizabeth 2
#2 Doe John 2
#3 Smith Steve 1

Answer 2

Tks Guys,
I considered your suggestions and tried a similar approach:
library(dplyr)
#Function to order 2 variables by alphabetical order.
#This function below i got from another post, couldn´t remember the author ;(.
alphabetical <- function(x,y){x < y}
#Created a sample dataframe
col1<-c("darcy","elizabeth","elizabeth","darcy","john","doe")
col2<-c("elizabeth","darcy","darcy","elizabeth","doe","john")
dfSample<-data.frame(col1,col2)
#Create an empty dataframe
dfCreated <- data.frame(col1=character(),col2=character())
#for each row, I reorder the columns and append to a new dataframe
#Tks to Gregor
for(i in 1:nrow(dfSample)) {
row <- c(as.String(dfSample[i,1]), as.String(dfSample[i,2]))
if(!alphabetical(row[1],row[2])){
row <- c(row[2],row[1])
}
dfCreated<-rbind(dfCreated,c(row[1],row[2]),stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
}
colnames(dfCreated)<-c("col1","col2")
dfCreated
#tks to Monk
summarize(group_by(dfCreated, col1, col2), n())
col1 col2 `n()`
<chr> <chr> <int>
1 darcy elizabeth 4
2 doe john 2