Patent ID: 7596555

Claim:
A method for searching for and selecting a name from within a name records database relating to an application program comprising: receiving a full name as a text string; searching a name records database for an exact match to the full name, the name records database storing names of the users of the application program; if an exact match to the full name is found, presenting the exact match to a user; and if no exact match to the full name is found: selecting a first group of names from the name records database, a portion of each selected name being an exact match to a portion of the full name; calculating a fuzzy match score for multiple names in the first group of names, the fuzzy match score calculated from at least one of a digram score based on a number of digrams matching between the full name and each of the multiple names, and a Damerau Levenstein distance score between the full name and each of the multiple names; selecting a second group of names from the first group of names based on the fuzzy match scores; displaying the second group of names as a list of names to the user, the list ranked according to the fuzzy match scores of the names in the list; and responsive to a user selecting a name from the displayed second group of names, resuming processing in the application program.