Why are name search parameters so strange?

Question

I recently created two new profiles that ended up being duplicates. The reason was that the Name search for "Aquilla Davis" did not include the existing profile for "Aquila Davis"

First and last name variants was checked, and provided results including "Mabel Aquilla (Davis) Brewer" and "Aquilla Miles Dawson", but not the existing [[Davis-54823|Aquila Davis (1813-1887)]]

Similarly, when searching for his daughter "Viretta Davis" the search did result in the profile for "Bonnie V. (Butler) Dawson" but not for the existing profile [[Davis-54834|Vieretta (Davis) Hernly (1839-1903)]]

It seems like these two very close spellings should have shown up in the search. It has caused a waste of time creating duplicate profiles and the hassle of getting two sets of profiles merged.

What could I have done differently to avoid this situation?

Could the search algorithm be tweeked to include such similar spellings?

Thanks, Vince Hernly-6

Answer 1

The search variants currently come from a copy of the WeRelate Variant names database. Aquilla and Aquila are not current variants of each other: https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Special:Names?type=g&name=aquilla

Comments

Jamie, is it possible to provide an update on the work to replace WeRelate? Also, might something like Soundex be incorporated in the future?

---

The searching and matching upgrades had been put on hold for more urgent items. We're almost done with a major round of infrastructure upgrades (aiming for the first week in December), and after that, I believe search is back to the top of the priority list.

I'm not sure about Soundex.

---

Thanks for the response, Jamie.