About this tool
The Phonetic Encoder turns a word or name into a phonetic code so that names that sound alike map to the same value — the trick behind fuzzy name matching, genealogy searches, and de-duplicating spelling variants. The default is American Soundex, a four-character code: it keeps the first letter, then maps the remaining consonants to digits (B,F,P,V→1; C,G,J,K,Q,S,X,Z→2; D,T→3; L→4; M,N→5; R→6) while vowels and H, W, Y map to 0.
The algorithm follows the classic rules exactly. Runs of the same digit that are adjacent, or separated only by H or W, collapse into a single digit, while letters separated by a vowel are encoded separately. All zeros are dropped, the retained first letter is prefixed, and the result is the first three digits right-padded with zeros to length four. This is why Robert and Rupert both encode to R163, and Ashcraft encodes to A261.
Switch the algorithm toggle to Metaphone (or ‘Both’) for a second, more modern phonetic view. Metaphone applies English pronunciation rules — silent-letter dropping, PH→F, TH→0 (theta), SH/TIA/SIO→X, soft versus hard C and G, and so on — producing a variable-length key that often groups homophones more accurately than Soundex for English words. Everything is a deterministic state machine computed locally in your browser; no data is looked up or transmitted.