Getty's Synoname™ and its cousins: A survey of applications of personal name-matching algorithms

The study reported in this article was commissioned by the Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP) as a background investigation of personal name-matching programs in fields other than art history, for purposes of comparing them and their approaches with AHIP's Synoname™ project. We review techniques employed in a variety of applications, including art history, bibliography, genealogy, commerce, and government, providing a framework of personal name characteristics, factors in selecting matching techniques, and types of applications. Personal names, as data elements in information systems, vary for a wide range of legitimate reasons, including cultural and historical traditions, translation and transliteration, reporting and recording variations, as well as typographical and phonetic errors. Some matching applications seek to link variants, while others seek to correct errors. The choice of matching techniques will vary in the amount of domain knowledge about the names that is incorporated, the sources of data, and the human and computing resources required. Personal name-matching techniques may be included in name authority work, information retrieval, or duplicate detection, with some applications matching on name only, and others combining personal names with other data elements in record linkage techniques. We discuss both phonetic- and pattern-matching techniques, reviewing a range of implemented and proposed name-matching techniques in the context of these factors.