// Double Metaphone - Enhanced phonetic encoding for multilingual name matching
Generates primary and alternate codes for better matching.
Handles names from various linguistic backgrounds.
More precise than original Metaphone algorithm.
Double Metaphone, published by Lawrence Philips in 2000, is an improved version of the Metaphone algorithm. It generates two phonetic codes (primary and alternate) for each word, accounting for different pronunciations and language origins. This dual-code approach significantly improves matching accuracy for names from various linguistic backgrounds including English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Slavic languages.
Two codes for better matching:
Schmidt:
Primary: XMT
Alternate: SMT
Smith:
Primary: SM0
Alternate: XMT
Campbell:
Primary: KMPL
Alternate: KMPL
Raspberry:
Primary: RSPR
Alternate: RSPR
Foreign names:
García – [KRS|KRX]
Çelik – [SLK|SLK]
Nguyen – [NKN|NKN]
The algorithm matches if ANY
combination of codes match.Double Metaphone is an advanced phonetic algorithm that generates two codes for each word - a primary and an alternate. This accounts for different pronunciations and etymologies, making it especially effective for matching names from different languages and cultures.
Double Metaphone handles many more edge cases and foreign language patterns. It recognizes Spanish, Italian, French, Germanic, and Slavic name patterns, generating appropriate alternate codes. This dramatically improves matching accuracy for international names.
Use Double Metaphone when dealing with multicultural data, international customer databases, genealogy research, or any application where names might have variant spellings or come from different language backgrounds.
The primary code represents the most likely English pronunciation, while the alternate code represents alternative pronunciations based on the word's possible language of origin. Two words match if any combination of their codes match (primary-to-primary, primary-to-alternate, etc.).