Get ID from category title?

Hi, I don’t know if this is possible, however I’m trying to get the category ID from just the title (or nice name). What I have so far is:

$parents = get_category_parents($cat, FALSE, ‘,’);
$parents = explode(‘,’, $parents);

foreach($parents as $parent)
{
if( get_category($parent)->category_parent == 0 )
{
$parent_cat = $parent;
}
}

But now what I have for $parent_cat is the title, however I need the ID so I can get the category description of the parent category. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Thanks ??