Dave's Work at Language Analysis Systems, Inc.

Here's a little comic strip to illustrate some of the issues we dealt with in designing multi-lingual name-search algorithms when I worked at Language Analysis Systems back in the 90s:



This obviously refers to bizarre spellings from Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe like the following: 
KASPRZYK   PRZYTYCKA   KRZYSZTOF   CZAJKOWSKI   VCZRNIK   MIKOLAJCZYK   HUSZTHY   ESEPGRCSEPREGI   DRCZHHONY
Names like these often have several variant spellings which can be difficult to retrieve using standard searching algorithms like SoundEx. For example, you may recognize the fourth item above as the Polish spelling of the famous Russian composer's name (Tschaikowsky). We have proto-typed a number of interesting search algorithms which deal with this problem using linguistic principles. For example, check out this cool phonetic name-search demo at our company website! Highlight and control-C one of the names below (strange spellings of the names of people in my extended family) before going over to the page. Then you can just paste it into the search window using control-V. Or just type in your own name or a name you know to be problematic in automatic searches. 
HAIRUS      WULF         RAWSZ        FREKEY
GARFELT     BURGESSIN    GAWRFEELD    BOGMYRE
STEPHAN     HENSON       HENTDSEN     HENDERSON
BURGISON    GARFELT      PEGMYRE      HERISZ
HARRISON    GARRISON     WULFE        FREAKY
TEPHANEY    MAIKUL       LEESUH       AIMEE      MATTIEU
LENSEA      SZTIFFUKNEE  SITKNEE      DALOOR
DILLON      QANDOES      DANA         BOBANA     TENA
FRECK       FRACK        LOGAN        RAWBURDT
LOWGUN      STIEWEN      SCHTIEWAN    DEYVUD
KNIGHTLEY   KNIGHT       KNECHT       NIKTE
WRIGHT      WREN         RHETT        REDD     
OUELSENNE   TSCHADMANN   EMHEMMID     HENTSEN
BRIGHT
PS You may want to set the maximum-number-of-returns button to 60 instead of the default 20 so that you will get back more hits.

Updated April 1st, 2002