the_title() not spliting

Hey all,

I am trying to split the name of a Post Title in to individual words (E.g. ‘John Smith’ would become ‘[0] => John, [1] => Smith’), but no matter what method I use (See below) the space in the tile is not being picked up and the each instance of $firstName is returning the whole Post Title.

Any help or pointers appriciated.

Thanks.

list($firstName, $surName) = split(" ", the_title(), 2);
echo $firstName . '<br />';

$str = the_title();
list($firstName, $surName) = split(" ", $str, 2);
echo $firstName . '<br />';

$firstName = explode(" ",the_title());
$firstName = $firstName[0];
echo $firstName . '<br />';

$firstName = the_title();
$firstName = explode(" ", $firstName);
$firstName = $firstName[0];
echo $firstName . '<br />';