How does the Inquiry and Xpress Teller search work when it comes to hyphenated names, or names that end with something like Jr., Sr., II, and III? How does it work with names with an apostrophe in it, such as D'Andra?

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In the new search engine, we use a special technique to handle last names that are hyphenated, or where there is a suffix after the name, such as Jr., Sr., II, III, and the like. Here's how it works:

Since the search engine can look in so many places based on the Advanced Search settings, there is a behind-the-scenes work file used to organize the data. This work file contains separate fields for the name that's displayed on the screen and the name that's used for sorting. For the name used for sorting, we scan the last name for a blank or hyphen followed by another character, looking for things such as "ALLEN JR" or "ALLEN-SMITH." When found, we remove anything past the blank or hyphen for that sort field. So in our example, the last name used for sorting would be set to "ALLEN” for both accounts. The screen would still display "ALLEN JR" or "ALLEN-SMITH" in any case.

NOTE: Basically, the system strips the suffix or hyphenated name for the purpose of sorting only. That does mean that if you have multiple entries for the same name but with different suffixes, the suffix sorting will not be alphabetical. Instead, the system must use the special "sort name" field in the work file. That means names will be in the order in which the entries are found in the list: sort name, then relationship, then account number.

Bottom line, these names will simply be listed right alongside similar last names that aren't hyphenated, or that don't contain a suffix, making it easier to tell, for example, when both a father and a son have accounts at the credit union.