title: Lucene Proximity Search with multiple words
body: <p>I am trying to build a query to search an Lucene index of names with name variants.
  The index was built with Lucene.NET version 2.9.2</p>
  
  <p>The user enters for example "Margaret White".
  Without a name variant option, my query becomes "Margaret White"~1 and it works.</p>
  
  <p>Now, I can look up name variants against both firstname and surname to produce an extended list.
  eg.  in this case (and I only include some as an example, since the list can be 100 or more sometimes) we can have</p>
  
  <p>Margaret / Margrett      White / Whyte </p>
  
  <p>The query "margrett white"~1 OR "margaret white"~1 OR "margrett whyte"~1 OR "margaret whyte"~1 </p>
  
  <p>gives me the correct result but given a possible 100 x 100 variant combinations, the query string woudl be cumbersome to say the least.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried various ways to achieve a more compact query but nothing seems to work.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone give me any pointers or alternative approach.  I have control over the index creation process and wonder if there is something I can do at that stage?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for looking
  Roger</p>