Soundex

[BigSlick]

Anyone able to define and explain what Soundex is?

[aghadowey]

There are lots of explanations online- just google "soundex". Here's one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex

[BigSlick]

Thanks,
Sounds like it is the database equivalent of voice recognition 

[Billyblue]

That's a very apt comparison, BigSlick.
The LDS sites use it a lot, which sometimes mean it throws up some weird suggestions!
Handy though for those times when a surname could be spelt three different ways in the one document, and by the same person!.
Dawn M

[mlrfn448]

It is based on similar sounding consonants, the idea being that when searching for a name, then minor variations in spelling would be insignificant, and all similar names would be found.
However, the start letter must be correct.

The point being that the minister would write what he heard in the register, but would not necessarily know the spelling.

I use it in my database, having downloaded some free soundex software from the internet.

Regards

[suelaw1954]

You need to be a bit careful with computer generated soundex codes. The rules are very simplistic and don't recognise things like vowel modifiers (e.g. "r" after "o" before a consonant) leading to some weird results.

My mother's surname has 2 common spellings: Spall or Sporle. Pronounciation is identical but the automatically generated code for Spall is S140 while the code for Sporle is S164 and there is no overlap in the resulting name lists. This means I always have to do 2 searches in a database with soundex.

The rules seem to be fairly simple, so I aim to do my coding by hand and commonsense in future.

Sue