3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the logical operation comprises a logical OR operation between the first preliminary value and the second preliminary value.
1. A method for matching names, comprising: creating a first bitmap distribution of character n-grams distributed into bitmap positions in descending order of frequency of occurrence of the character n-grams in a set of names based on bitmap positions with a lowest cumulative frequency, wherein at least two distinct character n-grams are assigned to a same bitmap position of the bitmap positions; creating a second bitmap distribution of the character n-grams distributed into the bitmap positions so that the at least two distinct character n-grams are assigned to different bitmap positions and so that any overlapping character n-grams in the first bitmap distribution do not overlap in the second bitmap distribution; using the first bitmap distribution, determining whether a first bitmap signature of a query name and a second bitmap signature of a target name in a set of names have a number of character n-grams overlapping that meet or exceed a first configurable threshold to generate a first preliminary value; using the second bitmap distribution, determining whether a third bitmap signature of the query name and a fourth bitmap signature of the target name have a number of character n-grams overlapping that meet or exceed a second configurable threshold to generate a second preliminary value; and in response to determining that a logical operation applied to the first preliminary value and the second preliminary value results in a value of true, determining that the query name and the target name are to be processed for further comparisons.