There are a number of ways. If you only have the one set of parentheses in each string, probably the easiest would be a slight modification of what you tried:
data have;
informat name $30.;
input name &;
cards;
Sammy (NL)
Don (DP)
Greg (OL)
Fred Donalson (DE)
St. George B (BW)
;
data want;
set have;
name=scan(name,-2,'(');
run;
another way:
data have;
informat name $30.;
input name &;
cards;
Sammy (NL)
Don (DP)
Greg (OL)
Fred Donalson (DE)
St. George B (BW)
;
data want;
set have;
name=substr(name,1,find(name,'(')-1);
run;
proc print;
run;
data have; informat name $30.; input name &; cards; Sammy (NL) Don (DP) Greg (OL) Fred Donalson (DE) St. George B (BW) ; run; data want; set have; a=prxchange('s/\(\w+\)/ /',-1,name); run;
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