Elastic search alphabetical sorting based on first character

Question

I have a collection of first names.

team dhoni
dhoni1
dibeesh 200
bb vineesh
devan

I want to sort it alphabetically ascending order (A - Z) like the following order

bb vineesh
devan
dhoni1
dibeesh 200
team dhoni

Mapping

 "first_name": {
      "type": "string",
      "store": "true"
},

I have tried

{
  "sort": [
    {
      "first_name": {
        "order": "asc"

      }
    }
  ], 
 "query": {
    "match_all": {
    }
  }
}

When i run this query am getting the names in following order.

dibeesh 200
bb vineesh
devan
team dhoni
dhoni1

Elastic search taking first names with number as first preference.

How can I prevent this?

Answer 1

I had a similar issue and the other answer didn't quite get it for me. I referred to this documentation instead, and was able to solve by mapping like this

"name": { 
    "type":     "string",
    "analyzer": "english",
    "fields": {
        "raw": { 
            "type":  "string",
            "index": "not_analyzed"
        }
    }
}

and then querying and sorting like this

{
    "query": {
        "match": {
            "name": "dhoni"
        }
    },
    "sort": {
        "name.raw": {
            "order": "asc"
        }
    }
}