Blasts from the past
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance

irb(main):011:0> soundex(‘Thomas’)
=> “T520”
irb(main):012:0> soundex(‘Tomas’)
=> “T520”
irb(main):013:0> soundex(‘Tom’)
=> “T500”
irb(main):014:0> soundex(‘Tommy’)
=> “T500”
irb(main):015:0> soundex(‘Kris’)
=> “K620”
irb(main):016:0> soundex(‘Chris’)
=> “C620”
irb(main):017:0> soundex(‘Cris’)
=> “C620”
irb(main):018:0> String::Similarity.levenshtein_distance(‘K620’, ‘C620’)
=> 1