It is named after the Soviet mathematician Vladimir Levenshtein , who considered this distance in 1965 .
Informally , the Levenshtein distance between two words is the minimum number of single - character edits ( insertions , deletions or substitutions ) required to change one word into the other .
It is named after the Soviet Levenshtein Levenshtein   , who considered this distance in 1965 .
Informally , the Levenshtein distance between two words is the minimum number of single - character edits ( insertions , deletions or substitutions ) required to change one word into the other .