Any name (or chunk of text being treated as a name) can be translated into a standardized "key." Keys are comprised solely of lowercase alphanumeric characters, underscores, and asterisks.
The key is used primarily in detecting name variants.
Some examples:
The default Wagn algorithm for key generation is as follows.
NOTE: At present the above algorithm has an English bias, because the singularization algorithm is based on English patterns. In coming releases, this will be addressed in attempts to make Wagn more completely international.