names coming out of the blue.....

Caristia

I think I understand what you're looking for. I used to work with automated speech recognition, otherwise known as "speech wreckognition" (and for very good reason!). Electric Tear Row, anyone? ;)

My brain probably isn't working very well this late at night, but I'll try to come up with a few for starters (and of course these aren't going to make any sense - that's the nature of the beast with speech recognition):

Daniel Cranston:
Dan yell grandson

Cranston:
Cram stun
Gram's stung
Ram's done

Marty Peterson:
Marty, Peter's son

Peterson:
Peter's sin
Peter is one

Lonnie Franks:
Lawn if ranks
Law & F rank

You could try selecting "find similar sounding words" from the drop-down menu on this site:

http://www.rhymezone.com

Link to soundex converter removed as RootsWeb seems to be somehow associated with Ancestry.com, which has message boards on its site.

HTH