sunlightlabs/name-cleaver — Issue #1: Name display cleanup vs. name tokenization
Author: paultyng
Created: 2011-12-22 14:41:40+00:00
State: open

This library is great for name display, but would it be worth pursuing something for solely computer based name recognition. Like tokenize, sort alphabetically, and use that as a token so that:

* John Smith
* Smith John
* Smith, John Sr.
* etc.

Could all be potentially recognized as similar entities by the computer, even if the display of that 2nd one may not actually come through properly since its missing a comma?

I had a lot of similar problems parsing data for Wikipedia automation and this was one way I tackled the name cleanup, separating the computer recognition of the same person from the display cleanup.