(+) Why Are We Limited to Soundex?

Genealogists love Soundex, a method of matching names that have similar sounds but may be spelled differently. In fact, Soundex became popular amongst genealogists almost as soon as it was invented in 1918. Soundex was patented by Robert C. Russell of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is sometimes called the “Russell Code.” The U.S. Census Bureau immediately adopted Soundex for indexing census records. Since then, others have used the Soundex code to sort similar-sounding names for telephone books, work records, drivers' licenses, and many other purposes. I noticed that the first four characters of my driver's license number are “E235,” the Soundex code for my last name.

Genealogists use Soundex to find variant spellings of ancestors' names. Almost all modern genealogy databases have a "search by Soundex" capability.

Soundex is a form of "phonetic encoding" or "sound-alike" codes. A Soundex code consists of one letter followed by three digits. For instance, Smith and Smythe both are coded as S530, Eastman is E235, and Williams is W452.

If you search many records of interest to genealogists, sooner or later you will need to use Soundex codes.