How Are International Names Different?
When a luxury brand implements Customer 360 programs, create data entry forms, or international databases are often unaware of how names differ around the world. They assume way too much about users in other countries. As a result, errors can be introduced into the data which will make interacting with customers difficult.
For example, in some cultures, such as those in Japan, Korea, and Hungary, it is common to write the family name before the given name. A software program that displays a “first name” as the given name could cause the agent or letter to unintentionally offend a customer. At a minimum, it shows that the brand does not understand the local market.
For global organizations, the challenge of matching a name increases when a name is written in a different character set in one country (e.g., Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Korean) than in another (e.g., Latin, Roman, Western).
For example, when a Greek resident writes his or her address in Greece, he/she is likely to use the Greek character set, which is different from the way it would be written in the rest of Europe.
Name Matching Example
Would your customer information system consider records containing names below as belonging to the famous footballer (soccer player) Therese Sjögran?
Therese Sjögran
Thérèse Sjögran
Teresa Sjogren
Terry Sjogran
T. Sjögran
KIT Sjögran
Theresa Sjogrann
Kirstin Sjögran
Kerstin Ingrid Therese Sjögran
The answer is that any of these could be Ms. Sjögran, whose real name is Kerstin Ingrid Therese Sjögran.
Generally, matching systems use transliterations of names for matching when character sets are mixed. However, as transliterations vary, a matching system cannot rely on exact matches across countries.
In addition, a flexible system for one country may be too flexible for another country with resulting false positive errors. For example, according to The Economist, one in five South Koreans have the surname Kim. The likelihood of a mismatch using names in Korea is higher than in many other nations.
A more detailed report, download Personal Names Around The World.
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Matching and Merging Personal Data
