Bit difficult to see exactly what you want to do, so I'm going to take a stab in the dark.
First, it's always a good idea to set up readily consumable sample data for people to make it easier to help you. In your case, this is enough: -
-- Set up readily consumable sample data so that we can test any solution
IF object_id('tempdb..#testEnvironment') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN;
DROP TABLE #testEnvironment;
END;
SELECT RecID,City,Ethnicity,LastName
INTO #testEnvironment
FROM (VALUES(1001,'Birmingham','Black British','Lewis'),
(1002,'London','White British','Peters'),
(1003,'London','Chinese','Han Seng'),
(1004,'Cardiff','Asian British','Singh'),
(1005,'London','Asian British','Lewis-Patel'),
(1006,'London','White British','Lewis-Morgan')
)a(RecID,City,Ethnicity,LastName);
Now anyone can execute that and have exactly the setup that you want them to test with.
That out of the way, here is what I think you're trying to do: -
-- Actual solution starts here
DECLARE @Input VARCHAR(8000) = 'Birmingham,Lewis,British';
SELECT RecID,City,Ethnicity,LastName,
MAX(CASE WHEN City LIKE '%'+Item+'%' THEN 'Matches City' ELSE '' END),
MAX(CASE WHEN Ethnicity LIKE '%'+Item+'%' THEN 'Matches Ethnicity' ELSE '' END),
MAX(CASE WHEN LastName LIKE '%'+Item+'%' THEN 'Matches LastName' ELSE '' END)
FROM #testEnvironment
CROSS APPLY [dbo].[DelimitedSplit8K](@Input,',')
WHERE CASE WHEN City LIKE '%'+Item+'%' THEN City END IS NOT NULL OR
CASE WHEN Ethnicity LIKE '%'+Item+'%' THEN Ethnicity END IS NOT NULL OR
CASE WHEN LastName LIKE '%'+Item+'%' THEN LastName END IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY RecID,City,Ethnicity,LastName;
Which returns: -
RecID City Ethnicity LastName
----------- ---------- ------------- ------------ ------------ ----------------- ----------------
1001 Birmingham Black British Lewis Matches City Matches Ethnicity Matches LastName
1002 London White British Peters Matches Ethnicity
1004 Cardiff Asian British Singh Matches Ethnicity
1005 London Asian British Lewis-Patel Matches Ethnicity Matches LastName
1006 London White British Lewis-Morgan Matches Ethnicity Matches LastName
This solution requires the 8K String Splitter (article here --> http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/%5B/url%5D) : -
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[DelimitedSplit8K]
--===== Define I/O parameters
(@pString VARCHAR(8000), @pDelimiter CHAR(1))
--WARNING!!! DO NOT USE MAX DATA-TYPES HERE! IT WILL KILL PERFORMANCE!
RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS
RETURN
--===== "Inline" CTE Driven "Tally Table" produces values from 1 up to 10,000...
-- enough to cover VARCHAR(8000)
WITH E1(N) AS (
SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL
SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL
SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1
), --10E+1 or 10 rows
E2(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E1 a, E1 b), --10E+2 or 100 rows
E4(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E2 a, E2 b), --10E+4 or 10,000 rows max
cteTally(N) AS (--==== This provides the "base" CTE and limits the number of rows right up front
-- for both a performance gain and prevention of accidental "overruns"
SELECT TOP (ISNULL(DATALENGTH(@pString),0)) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM E4
),
cteStart(N1) AS (--==== This returns N+1 (starting position of each "element" just once for each delimiter)
SELECT 1 UNION ALL
SELECT t.N+1 FROM cteTally t WHERE SUBSTRING(@pString,t.N,1) = @pDelimiter
),
cteLen(N1,L1) AS(--==== Return start and length (for use in substring)
SELECT s.N1,
ISNULL(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(@pDelimiter,@pString,s.N1),0)-s.N1,8000)
FROM cteStart s
)
--===== Do the actual split. The ISNULL/NULLIF combo handles the length for the final element when no delimiter is found.
SELECT ItemNumber = ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY l.N1),
Item = SUBSTRING(@pString, l.N1, l.L1)
FROM cteLen l
;