>All we have is names .. no additional details, se need a way of 'Approximating'
>e.g. John Henry == Jon Henry = John Henri
>I mean all these 'Sound' the same phonetically so If I use Levensthein , does that automatically do stuff like this
>other examples come to mind
> Mr.= Mister
>Dr. = Doctor

Gerard,

What you ask for is a tall order. There are a large number of variables. Especially when you factor in dirty data (where a user accidentally typed in j0hn instead of john by hitting the wrong key, etc.).

You're just going to have to do it piecemeal. With millions of records, I would start building candidate files, going in and manually looking at your query results, and seeing if there aren't many hard-and-fast combinations you can explicitly convert (such as "john" and "jon"). But to do it properly requires a very comprehensive algorithm with full phonetic rules, adapted to your audience (world-wide people, or just those in Ireland), etc.

A tall order.

One think I would make sure you do is keep a copy of the pared down file. Then, go back through the list of combined records manually by sampling and search for any obvious mistakes and undo them.