Vanity Number Lookup - Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Below you will find some of the more commonly asked questions regarding PhoneSpeller.

1. Vanity Number Lookup didn't return useable results for my number.
This service matches numbers against a dictionary of common terms. Unfortunately, most numbers won't spell fancy word-phrases. We've designed the pronounceable mnemonic results in an effort to assist with this limitation. In many cases, even if there isn't a matching dictionary word or phrase, we can deliver nonsensical words or abbreviations.

2. What are the "pronounceable mnemonic" results?
These results are based on a table of pronounceable letter-triples derived from a dictionary scan. Each potential mnemonic must be such that all of its letter-triples are in the table to be emitted. About 30% of possible triples are considered pronounceable.

Our pronounceable mnemonic results are unique to our service. We provide these results so that users can identify common abbreviations, slang, or nonsensical words that aren't included in common dictionaries.

A typical 7-digit phone number has 19,683 possible mnemonics, but this test usually cuts the list down to a few hundred or so, a reasonable number to eyeball-check. For some numbers, the list will, sadly, be empty.

3. My search didn't return any pronounceable mnemonic results.
Pronounceable mnemonic results won't work for numbers that include a 0 or 1. Try searching with those digits omitted and then re-insert them into any desirable results.

4. How do you handle letters Q and Z?
We have chosen to use the commonly accepted practice of assigning Q to 7 and Z to 9.

5. Can you offer PhoneSpeller results in other languages?
Absolutely! Our algorithms are designed so that we could easily plug-in a foreign-language dictionary. Unfortunately we haven't had a request for any specific languages. If you'd like to see PhoneSpeller utilize another language dictionary then drop us a line.

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