Patent ID: 8364462

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a geocoding query, the geocoding query comprising query tokens in a source language written in a source language script; parsing the geocoding query into the query tokens; transliterating the query tokens to provide transliterated query tokens in a target language written in a target language script, wherein the target language is different than the source language, the target language script is different than the source language script, and the transliterated query tokens include multiple different location names that are different interpretations of a location name provided by a first one of the query tokens; determining approximate matches between the transliterated query tokens and database name entries, the database name entries having corresponding geometric footprints that comprise one or more spatial regions; and selecting candidate matches from the approximate matches based on spatial affinity of the approximate matches, wherein the spatial affinity reflects overlap of the corresponding geometric footprints of the database name entries and wherein the candidate matches include an individual location name from the multiple different location names; wherein at least the selecting the candidate matches is performed by a computing device, wherein the candidate matches are in the target language and are written in the target language script.