I've noticed that the Tags in a Tag Cloud & Search exhibit this same behavior.

If you search for "Carol" it will include "Caroline", "Mich" will include "Michael". I'm sure this is by design. But where it starts to cause problem is in the Tag Cloud. If you click on the Tag for "Carol" you will get "Caroline" also. In my situation I have 10 tags for Carol & 200 for Caroline. So.....when you click the tag for Carol you get 200 pictures of Caroline, with 20 of Carol mixed in.

Is it possible to change the code that so that the Tag Cloud search function is an exact match?

Check your search options. You can define if tags should be partial or exact. You apparently have them set to partial.

Thanks! You guys think of everything!