10. A computer-implemented process for providing one or more suggested spelling corrections for a personal name included in a personal name query, comprising: using a computer comprising a processing unit and a memory to perform the following process actions: inputting a personal name query comprising a personal name in a particular language; using a hash function to produce one or more binary codewords from the personal name in the personal name query, wherein said hash function maps any personal name in a particular language and misspellings thereof to similar binary codewords; employing a personal name directory to identify up to a prescribed number of personal names in the personal name directory, each of which has one or more of the associated binary codewords that are similar to one or more of the binary codewords produced from the personal name query; designating the identified personal names as potential personal name corrections; and suggesting one or more of the potential personal name corrections as alternate names for the personal name from the personal name query.
10. A computer-implemented process for providing one or more suggested spelling corrections for a personal name included in a personal name query, comprising: using a computer comprising a processing unit and a memory to perform the following process actions: inputting a personal name query comprising a personal name in a particular language; using a hash function to produce one or more binary codewords from the personal name in the personal name query, wherein said hash function maps any personal name in a particular language and misspellings thereof to similar binary codewords; employing a personal name directory to identify up to a prescribed number of personal names in the personal name directory, each of which has one or more of the associated binary codewords that are similar to one or more of the binary codewords produced from the personal name query; designating the identified personal names as potential personal name corrections; and suggesting one or more of the potential personal name corrections as alternate names for the personal name from the personal name query. 11. The process of claim 10 , wherein said hash function was used to respectively produce and associate one or more binary codewords with each personal name in the personal name directory in said particular language, said producing and associating comprising, segmenting each personal name in the personal name directory into constituent tokens, wherein each token corresponds to a word in the personal name comprising a continuous string of characters unbroken by a space and whose characters are consistent with the types of characters employed in personal names in said particular language, identifying a set of unique tokens from the constituent tokens of the personal names from the personal name directory; generating an index which for each token in the set of unique tokens identifies all the personal names in the personal name directory that have that token as one of its constituent tokens; applying said hash function to each unique token to produce a binary codeword representation thereof; and associating the binary codeword produced for each unique token with that token in said index, and wherein the process action of using said hash function to produce one or more binary codewords from the personal name in the personal name query, comprises the actions of: segmenting the personal name from the query into constituent tokens, wherein each token corresponds to a word in the personal name comprising a continuous string of characters unbroken by a space and whose characters are consistent with the types of characters employed in personal names in said particular language; identifying unique tokens within the constituent tokens segmented from the personal name query that are a member of said set of unique tokens; and applying said hash function to each identified unique token from the personal name query to produce a binary codeword for each of the identified unique tokens.