Person Name Processing Fields

When standardizing person data, not all fields in a record need to be processed by the Master Index Standardization Engine. The standardization engine only needs to process fields that must be parsed, normalized, or phonetically converted. For a master index application, these fields are defined in mefa.xml and processing logic for each field is defined in the standardization engine configuration files.

Person Name Standardized Fields

The Master Index Standardization Engine can process person data that is provided in separate fields within a single record, meaning that no parsing is required of the name fields prior to normalization. It can also process person data contained in one long free-form field and parse the field into its individual components, such as first name, last name, title, and so on. Typically, only first and last names are normalized and phonetically encoded when standardizing person data, but the standardization engine can normalize and phonetically encode any field you choose. By default, the standardization engine processes these fields: first name, middle name, last name, nickname, salutation, generational suffix, and title.

Person Name Object Structure

The fields you specify for person name matching in the Master Index wizard are automatically defined for standardization and phonetic encoding. If you specify the PersonFirstName or PersonLastName match type in the wizard, the following fields are automatically added to the object structure and database creation script:

• field_name_Std

• field_name_Phon

  where field_name is the name of the field for which you specified person name matching.

For example, if you specify the PersonFirstName match type for the FirstName field, two fields, FirstName_Std and FirstName_Phon, are automatically added to the structure. You can also add these fields manually if you do not specify match types in the wizard. If you are parsing free-form person data, be sure all output fields from the standardization process are included in the master index object structure. If you store additional names in the database, such as alias names, maiden names, parent names, and so on, you can modify the phonetic structure to phonetically encode those names as well.