today I was going through rootsweb's SSDI and decided because I was having trouble with a very phonetic last name to try their soundex system. when that proved to only make matters worse, I tried the metaphone system (both are accessible in the 'site). I don't think it works all of the time (Fenenga came back with over 5000 hits) but some names it should work really well on. I was looking for Nienhuis/Nyenhuis/Nijenhuis, and came up with several hundred of one of the spellings, but only three of another spelling. Metaphone narrowed it down to just over one hundred-an easy enough size to manage. it also added various spellings I hadn't thought of . so if you have a name that's driving you buggy, this might help. oh, the site is http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi