Introduction
Nominex is a new surname matching system designed to help in the searching of computerized databases, especially of genealogical data.
Given a specific surname, it returns a list of alternative spellings ranked in order of similarity. So for instance, given the surname Gale, it would return alternatives such as Gaile, Gayle and Gail. These are regarded as very similar and therefore carry high scores. Lower down the list are spellings such as Gailes, Gales, Gayles, with less plausible variants including Geale, Gayler and Kale.
Nominex has been a couple of years in development, and its algorithms are highly optimized for surnames of British origin as recorded in historical databases. It is thus ideally suited to family history / genealogy applications, either on-line or on CD-Rom. It has been used in the surname search algorithms in the National Burial Index (3rd Edition), issued by the Federation of Family History Societies in 2010.
Use the links at left to find out more, or click here to go straight to the demo page.
Please if you would like to use the system for your own database.
Site update: 10 March 2010