# Synonyms for Sankt and St

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [March 29, 2018, 9:00am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057 "2018-03-29T09:00:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kurzer\_Patrick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kurzer\_Patrick](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Kurzer_Patrick)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2018, 9:00am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057/1 "2018-03-29T09:00:48Z")

</div>

Hi there,

I'm trying to get synonyms working for my existing setup. Currently I have this settings:

```
PUT city
{
	"settings": {
		"analysis": {
			"analyzer": {
				"autocomplete": {
					"tokenizer": "autocomplete",
					"filter": [
						"lowercase",
						"german_normalization",
						"my_ascii_folding"
					]
				},
				"autocomplete_search": {
					"tokenizer": "lowercase",
					"filter": [
						"lowercase",
						"german_normalization",
						"my_ascii_folding"
					]
				}
			},
			"filter": {
				"my_ascii_folding": {
					"type": "asciifolding",
					"preserve_original": true
				}
			},
			"tokenizer": {
				"autocomplete": {
					"type": "edge_ngram",
					"min_gram": 1,
					"max_gram": 15,
					"token_chars": [
						"letter",
						"digit",
						"symbol"
					]
				}
			}
		}
	},
	"mappings": {
		"city": {
			"properties": {
				"name": {
					"type": "text",
					"analyzer": "autocomplete",
					"search_analyzer": "autocomplete_search"
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

```

In this `City` Index I have documents like that:

`St. Wolfgang` or `Sankt Wolfgang` and so on. For me `St.` and `Sankt` are synonyms. So if I search for `Sankt` both of the documents should appear.

I created a new Filter:

```
"my_synonym_filter": {
   "type": "synonym",
    "ignore_case": "true",
    "synonyms": [
    	"sankt, st."
    ]
} 

```

So good for now. But the issues I faced are following:

Its clear that the dot after `st` is not analyzed and not searchable at the moment. But For the synonym the dot is important.

The second issue is if I search for `sankt` the synonym is also `st` which gives me also all documents which starts with st like `Stuttgart`. So this happens also because the dot is not used.

Do you have any idea how I can achieve the stuff? If you need any more information, please let me know.

Thanks in advance

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abdon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/abdon/32/9195_2.png) [@abdon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/abdon)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 8:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057/2 "2018-03-30T08:20:54Z")

</div>

You could modify your tokenizer to not remove punctuation by adding `"punctuation"` to the `"token_chars"` in your `autocomplete` tokenizer. However, maybe there is some punctuation that you do want to remove?

Alternatively you could normalize "St." to "Sankt" in the character filter phase, which takes place before tokenization. You could for example add the following character filter definition to the analysis settings:

```auto
      "char_filter": {
        "my_char_filter": {
          "type": "mapping",
          "mappings": [
            "St. => sankt",
            "st. => sankt"
          ]
        }
      }

```

and update your analyzers to use this char filter:

```auto
        "autocomplete": {
          "char_filter": [
            "my_char_filter"
          ],
          "tokenizer": "autocomplete",
          "filter": [
            "lowercase",
            "german_normalization",
            "my_ascii_folding"
          ]
        },
        "autocomplete_search": {
          "char_filter": [
            "my_char_filter"
          ],
          "tokenizer": "lowercase",
          "filter": [
            "lowercase",
            "german_normalization",
            "my_ascii_folding"
          ]
        }

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kurzer\_Patrick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kurzer\_Patrick](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Kurzer_Patrick)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 8:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057/3 "2018-03-30T08:49:33Z")

</div>

Thanks abdon for your solution. I will check that.

I also got a solution which worked for me. I had to change my analyzer. This is the final setting I use for now:

```
{
	"settings": {
		"analysis": {
			"analyzer": {
				"autocomplete": {
					"tokenizer": "whitespace",
					"filter": [
						"lowercase",
						"my_synonym_filter",
						"german_normalization",
						"edge_filter"
					]
				},
				"autocomplete_search": {
					"tokenizer": "whitespace",
					"filter": [
						"lowercase",
						"my_synonym_filter",
						"german_normalization"
					]
				}
			},
			"filter": {
				"edge_filter": {
					"type": "edgeNGram",
					"min_gram": 1,
					"max_gram": 15
				},
				"my_synonym_filter": {
					"type": "synonym",
					"ignore_case": "true",
					"synonyms": [
						"sankt, st., santa, saint",
						"sveti, sv."
					]
				}
			}
		}
	},
	"mappings": {
		"city": {
			"properties": {
				"name": {
					"type": "text",
					"analyzer": "autocomplete",
					"search_analyzer": "autocomplete_search"
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

```

what do you think?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abdon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/abdon/32/9195_2.png) [@abdon](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/abdon)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2018, 8:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057/4 "2018-03-30T08:52:39Z")

</div>

Looks good to me. You switched to a tokenizer that doesn't remove punctuation (because of the whitespace tokenizer). If that works for you: great! 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2018, 8:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/synonyms-for-sankt-and-st/126057/5 "2018-04-27T08:53:17Z")

</div>

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