A method is provided for creating a phonebook for a hands-free telephone system in a vehicle using phonebook entries retrieved from a remote phonebook of a mobile phone over a wireless communication link between a control module of the hands-free telephone system and the mobile phone. The method includes receiving a remote phonebook from the mobile phone, the remote phonebook including a plurality of entries, each entry including text data and numeric data, identifying the text data in each entry, generating an acoustic baseform for each entry based on the text data for each entry, storing the acoustic baseform for each entry in a baseform list, and storing the plurality of entries in a mobile phonebook associated with the baseform list.