[R] Is there a package that can do Fuzzy name matching to standardize names in a single column
Chris Evans
chr|@ho|d @end|ng |rom p@yctc@org
Wed Jun 15 18:39:12 CEST 2022
This isn't my expert area but I have at times encountered issues relating to it and I think this isn't "just"
(as in "just standardize the similarly spelled duplicate names"). I once thought about trying to work out how
many names I have in citations to my work. Over the years I have seen my name as:
Chris Evans
Evans, Chris
Christopher Evans
Evans, Christopher
C.D.H.Evans
Evans, C.D.H.
and a great one that a bank once gave me: DR CHRISTOPHE D EVANS (honestly ... why?)
Then there are all the misspellings as you say. Back in the days of snail mail reprint requests I used to
get teased about getting a fair few addressed to "Christ Evans".
Then there are things that add permutations of my qualifications (OK, perhaps not in your data but you have
the "Jr." and perhaps "III" or the like. I think these are more common in the USA than the UK.)
I also suspect that having names of "non-English" origins in there may complicate things too. I still get
Spanish naming conventions wrong and know that the default order of given name / family name is reversed
in Japanese but that many Japanese know that much of the world won't know this so reverse their name order
for things going outside Japan.
I think there's nothing trivial or "just" about doing this but I suspect there are established, accepted,
and always fallible ways of doing it but I have a nasty suspicion that some are proprietary and not at all
open source.
I think you may have to start with the issue of commas: are they being used before terminal qualifiers
(", Jr.", ", Dr." ...) or are they reversing family name and given name ("Evans, Chris")? I might start
by counting the numbers of commas in the entries and hoping it's always zero or one. If it is, I would
then look at the parts after the commas and see if I could get a list of common terminal qualifiers so I
would know they were not being treated as names (I know a man called Doctor Ronnie Doctor, but I suspect
he is never typed in as "Ronnie Doctor, Doctor"!)
If you have reversed given/family names you might want to try generating all the reversals and looking
for matches.
Then I might start to drill into full stops abbreviating names ("C. Evans", "Evans, C.", "Evans, C.D.H.")
and what about "Evans, CDH"? Can you assume that text segments all in upper case can be split, i.e.
always translate "CDH" into "C.D.H.". But then you have to deal with "II", "III" and even "IV" I guess.
Good job you're not doing British or French monarchs: "Henry VIII" and "Louise XVI" (I am not sure if
you can change your name to "Henry VIII" by deed poll in the UK. I do know you can't change it to "Jesus
Christ".
One tangential thing that might help is if you have other demographics: you might want to see if gender
(though it can change), age (will change), d.o.b. (shouldn't) might help you disaggregate some matches.
Enough already! Challenging stuff.
Very best (all),
Chris
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gregg Powell via R-help" <r-help using r-project.org>
> To: "Ashim Kapoor" <ashimkapoor using gmail.com>
> Cc: "r-help" <R-help using r-project.org>, help using r-project.org, "R-help-request using lists.R-project.org"
> <R-help-request using lists.r-project.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, 15 June, 2022 17:43:14
> Subject: Re: [R] Is there a package that can do Fuzzy name matching to standardize names in a single column
> Hello Ashim and kind regards for you taking the time to answer back.
>
>
>> library(fuzzyjoin)
>> ?stringdist_left_join
>
> -this will join two tables, but what I am trying to do is just standardize the
> similarly spelled duplicate names in just the first column of a single table.
>
> I don't think fuzzyjoin will help me in that regard.
>
> Thanks.
> Gregg
> Arizona, USA
>
> ------- Original Message -------
> On Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 at 8:04 AM, Ashim Kapoor <ashimkapoor using gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>
>
>>
>
>> Dear Gregg,
>>
>
>> Check this out:
>>
>
>> library(fuzzyjoin)
>> ?stringdist_left_join
>>
>
>> Best Regards,
>> Ashim
>>
>
>> On Wed, Jun 15, 2022 at 8:28 PM Gregg Powell via R-help
>> r-help using r-project.org wrote:
>>
>
>> > Have data sets where there are names, in the first column, client names in the
>> > second, and Client start date in the third.
>> >
>
>> > There are thousands of these records with thousands of names/clients/client
>> > start dates. The name is entered each time the person begins with a new client
>> > such that each person has many entries in the name column. Often the names were
>> > not entered in a consistent way. With and without middle initial, middle name,
>> > or various abbreviations such as ",RN" at the end of the name.
>> >
>
>> > Is there a package that can do fuzzy name matching so that the names in name
>> > column get replaced with a "standardized" format - where some type of machine
>> > learning can pick the most common spelling of each repeat name and replace the
>> > different variations with the common spelling?
>> >
>
>> > I included an example below. First table includes the names with the various
>> > spellings. Second table depicts what I hope to achieve.
>> >
>
>> > Again - this is on a large scale - there are something like 10,000 records with
>> > names that need to be standardized.
>> >
>
>> > Name
>> >
>
>> > Client
>> >
>
>> > Client Start Date
>> >
>
>> > John Good
>> >
>
>> > Client 1
>> >
>
>> > 1/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Joe Jackson
>> >
>
>> > Client 2
>> >
>
>> > 6/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Bob A. Barker
>> >
>
>> > Client 3
>> >
>
>> > 8/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > John B. Good
>> >
>
>> > Client 4
>> >
>
>> > 10/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Joe J. Jackson
>> >
>
>> > Client 5
>> >
>
>> > 12/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Bob Allen Barker
>> >
>
>> > Client 6
>> >
>
>> > 1/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > John Good
>> >
>
>> > Client 7
>> >
>
>> > 5/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > Joe Jack Jackson
>> >
>
>> > Client 8
>> >
>
>> > 8/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > Bob Barker
>> >
>
>> > Client 9
>> >
>
>> > 12/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > Name
>> >
>
>> > Client
>> >
>
>> > Client Start Date
>> >
>
>> > John Good
>> >
>
>> > Client 1
>> >
>
>> > 1/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Joe J. Jackson
>> >
>
>> > Client 2
>> >
>
>> > 6/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Bob A. Barker
>> >
>
>> > Client 3
>> >
>
>> > 8/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > John Good
>> >
>
>> > Client 4
>> >
>
>> > 10/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Joe J. Jackson
>> >
>
>> > Client 5
>> >
>
>> > 12/1/2020
>> >
>
>> > Bob A. Barker
>> >
>
>> > Client 6
>> >
>
>> > 1/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > John Good
>> >
>
>> > Client 7
>> >
>
>> > 5/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > Joe J. Jackson
>> >
>
>> > Client 8
>> >
>
>> > 8/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > Bob A. Barker
>> >
>
>> > Client 9
>> >
>
>> > 12/1/2021
>> >
>
>> > THANKS!
>> >
>
>> > Gregg Powell
>> >
>
>> > Arizona, USA______________________________________________
>> > R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
--
Chris Evans (he/him) <chris using psyctc.org>
Visiting Professor, UDLA, Quito, Ecuador & Honorary Professor, University of Roehampton, London, UK.
Work web site: https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/
CORE site: https://www.coresystemtrust.org.uk/
Personal site: https://www.psyctc.org/pelerinage2016/
OMbook: https://ombook.psyctc.org/book/
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