Elasticsearch match on property that has multiple values (array) - elasticsearch

Question

I have an index like this
{
"_index": "entities",
"_type": "names",
"_id": "0000230799",
"_score": 1,
"_source": {
"FIRST_NAME": [
"Deborah",
"Debbie"
],
"LAST_NAME": "Jones"
}
}
I attempt to do a match query on the name, but unless the first name is exact, no hits return
I would expect the below query to generate at least one hit and score it, am i wrong about that?
curl -XPOST 'http://localhost:9200/entities/names/_search?pretty=true' -d '
{
"query": {
"match":{
"FIRST_NAME":"Deb"
}
}
}'
my mappings are
{
"entities": {
"mappings": {
"names": {
"_parent": {
"type": "entity"
},
"_routing": {
"required": true
},
"properties": {
"FIRST_NAME": {
"type": "string"
},
"LAST_NAME": {
"type": "string"
}
}
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

The issue here isn't related to multiple values, but your assumption that the match-query will match anything that starts with your input. It does not.
In the match-family of queries there's the match_phrase_prefix that can be worth checking out. It is explained in a bit more detail here: http://www.elasticsearch.org/blog/starts-with-phrase-matching/
There is also the prefix-query, but note that it does not do any text analysis.
For a general introduction to text analysis, I can recommend these two articles:
https://www.found.no/foundation/text-analysis-part-1/
https://www.found.no/foundation/text-analysis-part-2/