Name Disambiguation Musings
The Wall Street Journal on April 19, 2011 talked about the need for customer name authority control in banks. Okay, so maybe that is not what they said. What they did outline was the problem Arabic names and the many ways to state them gives to banks and other organizations which try to track the information or put a hold on funds for organizations like the example, Moammar Gadhafi. Also know as many other names. His first name could be transliterated as Muammar, Mummar, Mohamed Mahmut, Mehmud and more than 20 other variants. The same goes last name could be Gaddafi, Ghathafi, Elkaddafi, El-Kaddafi, Al-Gaddafi, Gadhafi, Qaddafi, Al-Qadhafi, El-Qaddfi, Qadhafi, Abu Miryar Al-Qahafi, Ghadaffi, and others. Any combination of these names is valid. There are further complications of the Abu or Al or El and other designations of honor make things even more interesting.