Looking up name variations

September 28, 2006 8:33 AM

I find myself often having to look up several lists of names in a database. I would like to automate the process, but the problem is I'm usually given a nickname or variant on a person's full name (i.e. I'm given "Jim" and the name is "James" in the database).

I think the ideal solution would be if I had some sort of list of names with all common variants for each. Then, when I'm automating the lookup, I could look up every possible permutation of each person's name. Does anyone know of such a list or any other common approaches to solving this problem?

posted by zixyer to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

here is one list.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:47 AM on September 28, 2006

Look into SoundEx searching.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:09 AM on September 28, 2006

We use Soundex for "sound like" searching in one of our applications. While it works as intended for things like "Jim" and "Jimmy" and "James," it's highly susceptible to false positives. It also doesn't catch nicknames that mangle the original considerably (like "Dick" for "Richard").
posted by Doofus Magoo at 9:23 AM on September 28, 2006

Yeah, soundex is known to be pretty flawed.
posted by orthogonality at 10:22 AM on September 28, 2006

I, too, had very little luck with the use of SoundEx. I also searched for, but could not find, a comprehensive list of nicknames.

You might try a geneology site to start with.
posted by adipocere at 11:04 AM on September 28, 2006