Entity Resolution Has Many Names
Isn’t it ironic that a field focused on determining when two things are the same … has so many words to describe it?
There are many terms used for describing “the process of determining when two real world entities are the same, despite differences in how they are described.” The Wikipedia definition of record linkage calls out “also known as data matching, data linkage, entity resolution, and many other terms” as synonyms. That said, in recent years, the term entity resolution seems to be getting the most uptake.
Here are the synonyms I’ve run into over the years:
As if that’s not enough, specific industries use their own phrases, such as patient record matching, customer data unification, customer 360, or debtor matching, just to name a few.
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