Caverphone

The Caverphone within linguistics and computing, is a phonetic matching algorithm invented to identify English names with their sounds, originally built to process a custom dataset compound between 1893 and 1938 in southern Dunedin, New Zealand. Started from a similar concept as metaphone, it has been developed to accommodate and process general English since then.

Etymology

The Caverphone was created by David Hood in the Caversham Project at the University of Otago in New Zealand in 2002, revised in 2004. It was created to assist in data matching between late 19th century and early 20th century electoral rolls, where the name only needed to be in a "commonly recognisable form". The algorithm was intended to apply to those names that could not easily be matched between electoral rolls, after the exact matches were removed from the pool of potential matches. The algorithm is optimised for accents present in the study area (southern part of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand).

Procedure

Caverphone 1.0

The rules of the algorithm are applied consecutively to any particular name, as a series of replacements.

The algorithm is as follows:

  1. Convert to lowercase
  2. Remove anything not A-Z
  3. If the name starts with...
    1. cough, replace it by cou2f
    2. rough, replace it by rou2f
    3. tough, replace it by tou2f
    4. enough, replace it by enou2f
    5. gn, replace it by 2n
  4. If the name ends with
    1. mb, replace it by m2
  5. Replace
    1. cq with 2q
    2. ci with si
    3. ce with se
    4. cy with sy
    5. tch with 2ch
    6. c with k
    7. q with k
    8. x with k
    9. v with f
    10. dg with 2g
    11. tio with sio
    12. tia with sia
    13. d with t
    14. ph with fh
    15. b with p
    16. sh with s2
    17. z with s
    18. any initial vowel with an A
    19. all other vowels with a 3
    20. 3gh3 with 3kh3
    21. gh with 22
    22. g with k
    23. groups of the letter s with a S
    24. groups of the letter t with a T
    25. groups of the letter p with a P
    26. groups of the letter k with a K
    27. groups of the letter f with a F
    28. groups of the letter m with a M
    29. groups of the letter n with a N
    30. w3 with W3
    31. wy with Wy
    32. wh3 with Wh3
    33. why with Why
    34. w with 2
    35. any initial h with an A
    36. all other occurrences of h with a 2
    37. r3 with R3
    38. ry with Ry
    39. r with 2
    40. l3 with L3
    41. ly with Ly
    42. l with 2
    43. j with y
    44. y3 with Y3
    45. y with 2
  6. remove all
    1. 2
    2. 3
  7. put six 1 on the end
  8. take the first six characters as the code

Caverphone 2.0

  1. Start with a word
  2. Convert to lowercase
  3. Remove anything not in the standard alphabet (typically a-z)
  4. Remove final e
  5. If the name starts with
    1. cough make it cou2f
    2. rough make it rou2f
    3. tough make it tou2f
    4. enough make it enou2f
    5. trough make it trou2f
    6. gn make it 2n
  6. If the name ends with
    1. mb make it m2
  7. Replace
    1. cq with 2q
    2. ci with si
    3. ce with se
    4. cy with sy
    5. tch with 2ch
    6. c with k
    7. q with k
    8. x with k
    9. v with f
    10. dg with 2g
    11. tio with sio
    12. tia with sia
    13. d with t
    14. ph with fh
    15. b with p
    16. sh with s2
    17. z with s
    18. an initial vowel with an A
    19. all other vowels with a 3
    20. j with y
    21. an initial y3 with Y3
    22. an initial y with A
    23. y with 3
    24. 3gh3 with 3kh3
    25. gh with 22
    26. g with k
    27. groups of the letter s with a S
    28. groups of the letter t with a T
    29. groups of the letter p with a P
    30. groups of the letter k with a K
    31. groups of the letter f with a F
    32. groups of the letter m with a M
    33. groups of the letter n with a N
    34. w3 with W3
    35. wh3 with Wh3
    36. if the name ends in w replace the final w with 3
    37. w with 2
    38. an initial h with an A
    39. all other occurrences of h with a 2
    40. r3 with R3
    41. if the name ends in r replace the final r with 3
    42. r with 2
    43. l3 with L3
    44. if the name ends in l replace the final l with 3
    45. l with 2
  8. remove all 2s
  9. if the name end in 3, replace the final 3 with A
  10. remove all 3s
  11. put ten 1s on the end
  12. take the first ten characters as the code
  1. ↑ This may vary if the set of letters includes characters such as æ, ā, or ø
  2. ↑ Vowels are normally a, e, i, o, u but depending on the data might include characters such as æ, ā, or ø

Examples

Caverphone 1.0

Lee -> lee
lee -> l33
l33 -> L33
L33 -> L
L -> L111111
L111111 -> L11111

Thompson -> thompson
thompson -> th3mps3n
th3mps3n -> th3mpS3n
th3mpS3n -> Th3mpS3n
Th3mpS3n -> Th3mPS3n
Th3mPS3n -> Th3MPS3n
Th3MPS3n -> Th3MPS3N
Th3MPS3N -> T23MPS3N
T23MPS3N ->  TMPSN
TMPSN111111 -> TMPSN1

Caverphone 2.0

Lee -> lee
lee -> le
le -> l3
l3 -> L3
L3 -> LA
LA -> LA1111111111
LA1111111111 -> LA11111111

Thompson -> thompson
thompson -> th3mps3n
th3mps3n -> th3mpS3n
th3mpS3n -> Th3mpS3n
Th3mpS3n -> Th3mPS3n
Th3mPS3n -> Th3MPS3n
Th3MPS3n -> Th3MPS3N
Th3MPS3N -> T23MPS3N
T23MPS3N ->  TMPSN
TMPSN1111111111 -> TMPSN11111

See also

References

  1. ↑ Milette, Greg; Stroud, Adam (2012-05-18). Professional Android Sensor Programming. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 421–. ISBN 9781118240458. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  2. ↑ Phua, Clifton; Lee, Vincent; Smith, Kate (2006). "The Personal Name Problem And a Recommended Data Mining Solution". Encyclopedia of Data Warehousing and Mining. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.127.5111. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |citeseerx= (help)
  3. 1 2 "Caverphone". National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved 2018-08-20.