Everyone has a name and many people have several. We always try to identify people by their names, since searching by names is usually very productive, but it is not always easy or even pssoble to determine someone’s name. Potentially, we provide names in several forms. Names appear in records as reported by someone, and attemts by us to provide a standard version of the name. However, whenever transliteraton is involved, there are always probems with non-Latin alphabets. As a result, we may provide a small number of variants.
The US government spends a lot of energy trying to determine what names people use, and what variants might be encountered, for various purposes. The number of variants can be very large, but using just part of the name can cut through a crowd of name variants..
One good example is the welter of name varants for Belarusan President Alexander Lukashenko (or more properly Lukashenka), which evinces a small combinatoral explosion:
LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Hryhoryavich (a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aleksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alexander Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Aliaksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aleksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alexander Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Aliaksandr Ryhoravich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Grigorievich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Grigoriyevich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Hryhoryavich; a.k.a. LUKASHENKO, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich); DOB 30 Aug 1954; POB Kopys, Vitebsk oblast, Belarus; President (individual) [BELARUS]
(Source: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20060619)