MySql single column index or multi-column index in this case - mysql

Question

I have the following simplified table 'places', which contains 200,000+ rows:
placeId INT(10)
placeName VARCHAR (30)
placeNameEnglish VARCHAR (30)
placeName is a place name stored in the original language e.g. Rhône
placeNameEnglish is a place name translated into english e.g. Rhone
Currently I have two single column indexes - one for placeName and one for placeNameEnglish and am conducting these LIKE pattern queries:
$testStr = 'rho';
SELECT placeId
FROM places
WHERE (placeName LIKE '$testStr%' OR placeNameEnglish LIKE '$testStr%')
Done some research but can't quite get my head around multi-column indexes when used in this scenario. Question is, should I combine placeName and placeNameEnglish into a multi-column index or leave them as separate indexes?
UPDATE
Working on implementing the last suggested by #Gordon Linoff.
Considering adding a table named translations instead of placeNamesso that the same index can be used for multiple tables i.e a persons table that requires the same LIKE 'abc%' matching.
So far:
transId INT
parentId INT - either placeId or personId
parentTypeId TINYINT - either 1 to identify the places table or 2 for the persons table, etc (more tables could use this system at a later date)
languageId INT
transName VARCHAR
Should I also index the parentTypeId to accommodate the extra WHERE condition required to identify the correct parent table?
e.g. WHERE transName LIKE 'abc%' AND parentTypeId = 1
I imagine mysql works like this: it first uses the index for transName to match against transName LIKE 'abc%', then it filters the results using parentTypeId = 1

Answer 1

For this query:
SELECT placeId
FROM places
WHERE placeName LIKE '$testStr%' OR placeNameEnglish LIKE '$testStr%';
MySQL could use two indexes, one on places(placeName) and one on places(placeNameEnglish). The operation is a called index merge (see here). I wouldn't count on it. This query cannot fully use a composite index.
You can rephrase the query as:
SELECT placeId
FROM places
WHERE placeName LIKE '$testStr%'
UNION
SELECT placeId
FROM places
WHERE placeNameEnglish LIKE '$testStr%';
or:
SELECT placeId
FROM places
WHERE placeName LIKE '$testStr%'
UNION ALL
SELECT placeId
FROM places
WHERE placeId NOT IN (SELECT placeId FROM places WHERE placename LIKE '$testStr%') AND
placeNameEnglish LIKE '$testStr%';
These can take advantage of the two indexes.
My recommendation, though, is to change the structure of your data. Have a table called PlaceNames (or something like that) with these columns:
placeNameId INT
placeId INT,
languageId INT,
placeName VARCHAR(255)
That is, have a separate row for each language. Your query can then easily take advantage of an index on placeName(placeName).

Answer 2

For your original question: Two separate INDEXes. But... You are working too hard:
For European place names, you don't need to search both columns. The case folding and accent insensitivity of utf8_unicode_ci (or virtually any collation other than utf8_bin) will do what you need:
mysql> SELECT 'Rhône' LIKE '%rho%', 'Rhône' LIKE '%xyz%';
+-----------------------+-----------------------+
| 'Rhône' LIKE '%rho%' | 'Rhône' LIKE '%xyz%' |
+-----------------------+-----------------------+
| 1 | 0 |
+-----------------------+-----------------------+
Edit Based on OP's comment, this is not a complete solution.