2.1 Standard name. Every group that is defined consists of at least one standard name spelling. One of these names serves to refer the whole group of standards, it being selected as a representative spelling. Sometimes people refer to this version as the standard. However, a name group may have many acceptable name versions, all of which may be perfectly standard in form. In fact initially the system considers every new distinct form of a name as belonging to its own individual group and makes it the representative and a standard by default. The expert then classifies these distinct forms and may end up assigning the spelling to a different group as appropriate. Normally the expert recognizes and classifies different forms, such as nicknames, diminutives, misspellings, oblique case forms, and abbreviations. She may attach certain of them to the standard name as a deviant, i.e., an abnormal version. Typically any other standard spelling in the group is one of the variants of the particular standard spelling. For example, it is easy to consider Green as a misspelling of Greene and vice versa.

Similar groups of names occur with localities. In this case it is usually much easier to see that there are multiple ways to classify misspellings.