title: smart search by first/last name
body: <p>I have to build a search facility capable of searching members by their first name/last name and may be some other search parameters (i.e. address).</p>
  
  <p>The search should provide a list of match candidates so that the user can select whatever he/she seems the "correct" match.  </p>
  
  <p>The search should be smart enough so that the "correct" result would be among the first few items on the list. The search should also be tolerant to typos and misspellings and, may be, even be aware of name shortcuts i.e. Bob vs. Robert or Bill vs. William.</p>
  
  <p>I started investigating Lucene and the family (like elastic search) as a tool for the job. While it has an impressive array of features addressing similar problems for the full text search, I am not so sure how to use them for my task - up to the point that maybe Lucene is not the right tool here at all.</p>
  
  <p>What do you guys think - how can I harness Elastic Search to solve my problem? Or should I look elsewhere? </p>