---
title: phonetic token filter plugin
description: The phonetic token filter takes the following settings: It is important to note that "replace": false can lead to unexpected behavior since the original...
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/elasticsearch/plugins/analysis-phonetic-token-filter
products:
  - Elasticsearch
---

# phonetic token filter plugin
The `phonetic` token filter takes the following settings:
<definitions>
  <definition term="encoder">
    Which phonetic encoder to use. Accepts `metaphone` (default), `double_metaphone`, `soundex`, `refined_soundex`, `caverphone1`, `caverphone2`, `cologne`, `nysiis`, `koelnerphonetik`, `haasephonetik`, `beider_morse`, `daitch_mokotoff`.
  </definition>
  <definition term="replace">
    Whether or not the original token should be replaced by the phonetic token. Accepts `true` (default) and `false`. Not supported by `beider_morse` encoding.
  </definition>
</definitions>

```json

{
  "settings": {
    "index": {
      "analysis": {
        "analyzer": {
          "my_analyzer": {
            "tokenizer": "standard",
            "filter": [
              "lowercase",
              "my_metaphone"
            ]
          }
        },
        "filter": {
          "my_metaphone": {
            "type": "phonetic",
            "encoder": "metaphone",
            "replace": false
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}


{
  "analyzer": "my_analyzer",
  "text": "Joe Bloggs" <1>
}
```

It is important to note that `"replace": false` can lead to unexpected behavior since the original and the phonetically analyzed version are both kept at the same token position. Some queries handle these stacked tokens in special ways. For example, the fuzzy `match` query does not apply [fuzziness](/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/elasticsearch/rest-apis/common-options#fuzziness) to stacked synonym tokens. This can lead to issues that are difficult to diagnose and reason about. For this reason, it is often beneficial to use separate fields for analysis with and without phonetic filtering. That way searches can be run against both fields with differing boosts and trade-offs (e.g. only run a fuzzy `match` query on the original text field, but not on the phonetic version).

## Double metaphone settings

If the `double_metaphone` encoder is used, then this additional setting is supported:
<definitions>
  <definition term="max_code_len">
    The maximum length of the emitted metaphone token. Defaults to `4`.
  </definition>
</definitions>


## Beider Morse settings

If the `beider_morse` encoder is used, then these additional settings are supported:
<definitions>
  <definition term="rule_type">
    Whether matching should be `exact` or `approx` (default).
  </definition>
  <definition term="name_type">
    Whether names are `ashkenazi`, `sephardic`, or `generic` (default).
  </definition>
  <definition term="languageset">
    An array of languages to check. If not specified, then the language will be guessed. Accepts: `any`, `common`, `cyrillic`, `english`, `french`, `german`, `hebrew`, `hungarian`, `polish`, `romanian`, `russian`, `spanish`.
  </definition>
</definitions>