34. A system for facilitating searching and matching of data, comprising: a non-transitory memory device for storing computer readable program code; and a processor in communication with the memory device, the processor being operative with the computer readable program code to: receive an input data string including one or more ideographic elements; convert the input data string to a Latin-based input data string; generate one or more input keys based on the Latin-based input data string, including remove any non-space silent element from the input data string to generate a phonetic key; search, using the one or more input keys, a reference database for one or more candidate records, wherein similar records in the database are indexed by a common lookup key; and if the one or more candidate records are found, determining a match score of the one or more candidate records.
34. A system for facilitating searching and matching of data, comprising: a non-transitory memory device for storing computer readable program code; and a processor in communication with the memory device, the processor being operative with the computer readable program code to: receive an input data string including one or more ideographic elements; convert the input data string to a Latin-based input data string; generate one or more input keys based on the Latin-based input data string, including remove any non-space silent element from the input data string to generate a phonetic key; search, using the one or more input keys, a reference database for one or more candidate records, wherein similar records in the database are indexed by a common lookup key; and if the one or more candidate records are found, determining a match score of the one or more candidate records. 37. The system of claim 34 wherein the processor is further operative with the computer readable program code to generate the one or more input keys by generating a phonetic key based on at least one of one or more phonetic spellings of the one or more ideographic elements.