9. The device of claim 8 , wherein the communication interface receives a request for information to be returned, the request for information identifying a particular user characteristic to be returned, and the processor communicates via the communication interface the particular user characteristic identified by the request for information and determined from the one or more name characteristics.
8. A device, comprising: a communication interface that receives a name of an individual person; a storage element that stores a plurality of names; and a processor that: receiving, for a name of a person and from a plurality of third parties, information indicating a name characteristic that people with the name of the person typically have; calculating a confidence value associated with the name characteristic as the percentage of the third parties that associated the name characteristic with the name; stores the name characteristic and the calculated confidence value in the storage element in association with each of the corresponding plurality of names; determines whether a received name of the individual person matches any of the stored names; and in response to determining that the received name matches a first of the stored names: identifies the name characteristic associated with the first stored name that matches the received name; determines one or more user characteristics of the person associated with the received name based on the identified name characteristic; and returns at least one of the determined one or more user characteristics.