International Business Machines Corporation

Nien C King

Shudong Huang

Techniques for Chinese name matching are described. A Chinese name is received and is romanized into a Mandarin Pinyin representation. The Mandarin Pinyin representation of the Chinese name is matched against a set of Romanized Chinese names originating from several different Chinese character names. In response to finding a potential match between the Mandarin Pinyin representation and Romanized Chinese name, the original Chinese script for the Romanized Chinese name is retrieved. A native script comparison is applied between the received Chinese name and the original Chinese script for the Romanized Chinese name to obtain a match score. The native script comparison includes character-by-character comparison, character variant look-up, and/or consideration of name component misalignments. The obtained match score is used as a filter to reduce false positives that are generated in the matching of the Mandarin Pinyin representation against the set of Romanized Chinese names.

Native-script and cross-script chinese name matching

Chinese name transliteration is described. A Chinese name including a surname followed by a given name is received. The received Chinese name is parsed into a surname and a given name by: identifying any dual-character surnames in the received Chinese name, by referencing a list of known Chinese surnames; identifying any single-character surnames in the received Chinese name, by referencing the list of known Chinese surnames; and identifying, among the remaining characters in the received Chinese name, any characters not belonging to a dual-character or a single-character surname as a given name. The identified surname and the identified given name are transliterated into a Mandarin Pinyin representation. The Mandarin Pinyin representation of the surname and the given name is normalized into a pre-determined representation.

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Nien C King