Data Masking Components: Last Name Dynamic

Last Name Dynamic

Purpose

This component masks last names by replacing them with values from a built-in dictionary of the 250 most common U.S. last names, while preserving referential integrity across the dataset. The same original name will always be mapped to the same substituted name within the masked result.

The substitution is not one-to-one: multiple original names may map to the same replacement name, especially when the original dataset contains more unique values than the available substitution set. Despite this, consistency is maintained so that identical input values always produce identical masked values.

Suitable for anonymizing data when names need to stay consistently masked across rows or tables.

This version is ideal for test data scenarios or longitudinal datasets where relationships between records must remain intact.

Algorithm

Variation of Random Character Permutation Algorithm

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Data Masking Components: Last Name Dynamic

1. Last Name Dynamic
1.1 Purpose
1.2 Algorithm

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