Novel Phonetic Name Matching Algorithm with a Statistical Ontology for Analysing Names Given in Accordance with Thai Astrology

Since antiquity names have been very important to people. Naming from the past to the present has been continuously developed and has evolved into a variety of patterns. Each pattern has its own rules depending on local belief and language that has been developed until the present. In many cultures naming is not only important because every individual needs to have a name but have helpful names or names with a good sound. The basic goal of naming in Thai society is to provide a good fortune and progress of living. Most Thai parents try to choose names they feel will bring good luck to their offspring and to the family. The choice of appropriate names is based on old rules of Thai astrology according to weekday of birth, and the rules of available letters can influence the destiny of the individuals as is described in Thai astrology, since it uses the day of birth as an input. Thais can change their own given names as often as they want in order to achieve a good fortune. The current web based systems for Thai names are static web pages and cannot deal with the problem of helping change a name to a good name with similar sound. In this research, a web-based system with a novel name matching algorithm for analysing Thai names is proposed, which takes into account the Thai astrology and uses a statistical ontology to check and evaluate how suitable names in the cultural environment with respect to sound and the persons' fortune are. The system and the algorithm have been implemented to assess Thai naming habits and the development in naming conventions over the past 20 years. The analysis concentrates on how which names have been adopted as “good names”, how much they follow the rules according to Thai astrology and whether they contain letters out of the so-called misfortune attribute set or not. After a name has been found to be of low value to the individual or to contain letters from the misfortune attribute, the system of Thai astrology naming will help to change names. A new composite name matching technique called Metasound (a combination of the Soundex and Metaphone algorithms) has been implemented and is used for finding name variants (spelling and phonetic variations). Therefore, Metasound has been developed based on commonplace rules of Thai pronunciation for matching words that sound and are spelled alike. The algorithm reduces the Thai alphabet to eight consonant sounds:/ k/ or /kh//K,/b/ or /p/ B, /d/, /t/ or /th/ D, //ŋ/ NG, /n/ N, /m/ M, /j/ Y and /w/ W. With the help of this new algorithm it is possible to offer a web based service for changing a given name leading to a good fortune according to Thai belief and with a melodious sound. Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact [email protected] to request redistribution permission. Phonetic Name Matching Algorithm 498