# Will find things like "Art Council", "Artists Ltd", ... Client.objects.filter(name__istartswith="art") # ...but won't find "The Art Council", "United Artists", ... # This will: Client.objects.filter(name__icontains="art") # ...but will find things like "Lartistic plc", "Bart Simpson" # which is not suitable for, say, an autocomplete feature # Use this instead: Client.objects.filter(name__iregex=r"(^|'| )art+") # Will find things like "The Artists", "Art Uni", "Le d'Artis" but not "Bart"