Thanks. I actually did think of that explanation. But it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Google Voice, of all services, is exactly the kind of service that should be able to access the user's contacts, for things like dialing and showing the names on incoming phone calls. Super hard to believe that's an issue. And if the permission isn't there, it's easy to ask for it. And if not, just use a generalized list of names.

Yes silly me for focusing on contacts. They could have just built a general name dictionary for various languages. If they cared to. But (judging by the poor recognition performance of the system) that doesn't seem to have happened, at least the last time I used the service, which admittedly was some time ago.