4 ms·

This is actually a pretty interesting problem and the website doesn't do it full justice. Do you want the same spelling? That's easy, but the pronunciation is

This is actually a pretty interesting problem and the website doesn't do it full justice. Do you want the same spelling? That's easy, but the pronunciation is quite often completely different. A good example is Jules in French vs English. In this scenario, you're effectively going by two differently-pronounced names in all face-to-face interactions, not that different from the folks from China or India who are adopting "Westernized" names abroad. The only perk is that you might not have to spell it out over the phone. Do you want the same pronunciation? This is also fairly easy in many languages, but the spelling is likely to differ. An example of this might be Hannah versus Hana (English / Czech). This option makes verbal communications easy, but may confuse people who are trying to read your name out loud or to write it down - so any interactions with customer service are going to be mildly annoying. Do you want both? For most languages, the list will be extremely short, perhaps half a dozen names such as "Anna". If you don't fall in love in one of these options, tough luck. There is also a softer version of this goal: have a name that isn't native in the second language, but that is easy to spell and pronounce. For most people, this is probably the best compromise. It lets you keep your national identity, doesn't limit your choices too much, and minimizes friction.

ant6n 3y ago
For my son, a half-German, half-Quebecer, we wanted same spelling in English/French/German but also similar pronunciation, but also native appearance, but also Chinese pronunceability for the grandparents. We ended up with Daniel.
croisillon 3y ago
even in my country of origin most people are not sure how my (very regional) name is written or pronounced. living abroad, people are flumoxed my name is so weird
riffraff 3y ago
you forgot the most interesting! same spelling and pronounciation, different gender! Gabriele and Andrea come to mind.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  The Spanish woman’s name Andrea and the Italian men’s name Andrea are pronounced the same, I think. It’s only the English approximation that’s pronounced differently.
  - autarch 3y ago
    There are two different pronunciations for Andrea in English. The one that's _not_ like Spanish or Italian is maybe a bit more common, but I've met people with both.
- osmsucks 3y ago
  Beats me how "Andrea" became a female name. The name literally means "manly".
schrijver 3y ago
Don’t see the problem with different pronunciations… I have a first name like Jules, I like it… indeed depending on whether people are French or English speaking they pronounce it differently—but that doesn’t bother me at all! It still feels very much like they are referring to me, and it feels like two versions of the same name, not two names.
- PumpkinSpice 3y ago
  None of this is a problem in any objective sense. It's just that if your goal is to use one name across two languages, it's not exactly what you get in this scenario. Stuff like that doesn't bother me at all, but I bumped into quite a few immigrants who had strong preferences one way or the other.
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    I perceive my name to be how it is pronounced, with writing being secondary. Interesting that others see it the opposite way. Maybe related: I remember stuff best when it's spoken, whereas apparently most people learn best when they read it or hear+write_along. I'm not dyslexic so it's not that I don't read well or anything, but still, audio seems to be my brain-compatible format. When someone says luke, yeah I'll get it and I definitely don't mind, but IPA /lyk/ or French Luc is what my name is. Apparently the /y/ sound just doesn't exist in most languages I interact with and that makes it impossible for virtually any non-French/Dutch person to pronounce it properly. I don't fault them, I don't mind, but I appreciate if someone makes an effort (even if it's wrong, it's only about trying) to call me by my name rather than by a translation thereof. (Edit: wtf, don't trust tools like http://ipa-reader.xyz http://ipa-reader.xyz that is near the top of search results. The default american voice pronounces /y/ like the "o" in "who". What's the point of IPA reader if you're going to pronounce an A like a B when your language doesn't have the A sound?! Accent is fine but don't change the sound to a different IPA character altogether... For the symbols /lyk/, I've tested all voices: Dutch, French (+Canadian), Icelandic, German, Norwegian, Turkish, and Swedish are correct, whereas English, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese incorrectly read the IPA. Some others are glitchy or mixed results between male/female voices.)
renewiltord 3y ago
The objective, in my case, is to choose a name that represents both parents’ ancestry. That’s pretty much it. Most people with foreign names are used to many pronunciations in the US and I am comfortable and will respond to any of them. I think it’s a pretty cool site but the overlap between China and the rest of the world is perhaps insufficient in reality. Sad.
mgaunard 3y ago
I'm French. I pronounce my name (including my last name) the English way when introducing myself in English. The way I pronounce my son's name, who speaks French, Russian and English, also depends on which language I speak to him.
micheljansen 3y ago
My wife and I wanted to give our son a name that would intuitively be pronounced the same by both sides of the family (who speak respectively Brazilian Portuguese and Dutch). Turns out that really does limit your options a lot (aside from the perennial names with Greek/Hebrew/biblical roots).
- bojan 3y ago
  We had the same problem, and in the end failed. The pronunciation of E, R and I, even though similar to my ears, turns out to be quite different to the native speakers of both languages.
neilv 3y ago
> the list will be extremely short, perhaps half a dozen names such as "Anna". Even shorter, if the languages include Brazilian Portuguese: "Ana". (Source: In a research poster/demo session in the US, I'd named one of the example characters as "Ana", since I was recently interested in Brazil, and had been seeing that name. One of the people who saw the poster/demo wasn't a native English speaker, but they made an effort to kindly and gently point out the spelling error, with a smile, as if they were trying to save me from the additional embarrassment of showing the error any longer. I thanked them, and didn't tell them.)
jcul 3y ago
I have a Brazilian friend living in Ireland, who went for this route, of easy to spell / pronounce for Irish English speakers.
beAbU 3y ago
My name is pronounced differently in my home language vs English. My close English speaking friends and colleagues pronounce my name the "correct" way, according to my native language. Acquaintances, distant colleagues and new people I meet will pronounce it the Engish way. I've learned to react to both pronounciations.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Do you want the same pronunciation? This is also fairly easy in many languages, but the spelling is likely to differ. An example of this might be Hannah versus Hana (English / Czech). > Do you want both? For most languages, the list will be extremely short, perhaps half a dozen names such as "Anna". As a sanity check, I looked up wikipedia's page on Czech phonology, which indicates that the vowel [æ] does not exist in Czech. That by itself will absolutely prevent the English names Hannah /'hænə/ or Anna /'ænə/ from matching any possible Czech pronunciation. I'm kind of curious how you came up with the examples. (Ali is a name that will transfer well across many languages.) > In this scenario, you're effectively going by two differently-pronounced names in all face-to-face interactions, not that different from the folks from China or India who are adopting "Westernized" names abroad. People can overlook what I consider stupid obvious requirements in this kind of scenario. I knew a Chinese girl who used the English name Cynthia. It's a perfectly respectable English name; the only problem was that she was completely unable to pronounce "Cynthia", making it a challenge for her to communicate her own name to English speakers. I don't understand why Chinese speakers don't put more [any] emphasis on using names that they are themselves able to pronounce, like Tina or Julie.
- dmoy 3y ago
  > don't understand why Chinese speakers don't put more [any] emphasis on using names that they are themselves able to pronounce, like Tina or Julie. Some are assigned an English name by their first English teacher in school. This English teacher themselves may not really be able to speak English (e.g. this is the case for more than one person in my family). By the time they figure out otherwise, it's kinda stuck/habit.
edanm 3y ago
Yes, this is a hard problem given different pronunciations etc. We actually looked for a tri-lingual name for our kids, English Hebrew and Spanish. Luckily the Hebrew alphabet is different so that wasn't a problem in terms of spelling, but we had a lot of discussions around how to spell names that have different spellings in English vs. Spanish. We went with names that are not native-Hebrew, but are easy to pronounce in all three languages.

ant6n 3y ago

For my son, a half-German, half-Quebecer, we wanted same spelling in English/French/German but also similar pronunciation, but also native appearance, but also Chinese pronunceability for the grandparents. We ended up with Daniel.

croisillon 3y ago

even in my country of origin most people are not sure how my (very regional) name is written or pronounced. living abroad, people are flumoxed my name is so weird

riffraff 3y ago

you forgot the most interesting! same spelling and pronounciation, different gender! Gabriele and Andrea come to mind.

School-Cotton 3y ago
The Spanish woman’s name Andrea and the Italian men’s name Andrea are pronounced the same, I think. It’s only the English approximation that’s pronounced differently.
- autarch 3y ago
  There are two different pronunciations for Andrea in English. The one that's _not_ like Spanish or Italian is maybe a bit more common, but I've met people with both.
osmsucks 3y ago
Beats me how "Andrea" became a female name. The name literally means "manly".

schrijver 3y ago

Don’t see the problem with different pronunciations… I have a first name like Jules, I like it… indeed depending on whether people are French or English speaking they pronounce it differently—but that doesn’t bother me at all! It still feels very much like they are referring to me, and it feels like two versions of the same name, not two names.

PumpkinSpice 3y ago
None of this is a problem in any objective sense. It's just that if your goal is to use one name across two languages, it's not exactly what you get in this scenario. Stuff like that doesn't bother me at all, but I bumped into quite a few immigrants who had strong preferences one way or the other.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  I perceive my name to be how it is pronounced, with writing being secondary. Interesting that others see it the opposite way. Maybe related: I remember stuff best when it's spoken, whereas apparently most people learn best when they read it or hear+write_along. I'm not dyslexic so it's not that I don't read well or anything, but still, audio seems to be my brain-compatible format. When someone says luke, yeah I'll get it and I definitely don't mind, but IPA /lyk/ or French Luc is what my name is. Apparently the /y/ sound just doesn't exist in most languages I interact with and that makes it impossible for virtually any non-French/Dutch person to pronounce it properly. I don't fault them, I don't mind, but I appreciate if someone makes an effort (even if it's wrong, it's only about trying) to call me by my name rather than by a translation thereof. (Edit: wtf, don't trust tools like http://ipa-reader.xyz http://ipa-reader.xyz that is near the top of search results. The default american voice pronounces /y/ like the "o" in "who". What's the point of IPA reader if you're going to pronounce an A like a B when your language doesn't have the A sound?! Accent is fine but don't change the sound to a different IPA character altogether... For the symbols /lyk/, I've tested all voices: Dutch, French (+Canadian), Icelandic, German, Norwegian, Turkish, and Swedish are correct, whereas English, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese incorrectly read the IPA. Some others are glitchy or mixed results between male/female voices.)

renewiltord 3y ago

The objective, in my case, is to choose a name that represents both parents’ ancestry. That’s pretty much it. Most people with foreign names are used to many pronunciations in the US and I am comfortable and will respond to any of them. I think it’s a pretty cool site but the overlap between China and the rest of the world is perhaps insufficient in reality. Sad.

mgaunard 3y ago

I'm French. I pronounce my name (including my last name) the English way when introducing myself in English. The way I pronounce my son's name, who speaks French, Russian and English, also depends on which language I speak to him.

micheljansen 3y ago

My wife and I wanted to give our son a name that would intuitively be pronounced the same by both sides of the family (who speak respectively Brazilian Portuguese and Dutch). Turns out that really does limit your options a lot (aside from the perennial names with Greek/Hebrew/biblical roots).

bojan 3y ago
We had the same problem, and in the end failed. The pronunciation of E, R and I, even though similar to my ears, turns out to be quite different to the native speakers of both languages.

neilv 3y ago

> the list will be extremely short, perhaps half a dozen names such as "Anna". Even shorter, if the languages include Brazilian Portuguese: "Ana". (Source: In a research poster/demo session in the US, I'd named one of the example characters as "Ana", since I was recently interested in Brazil, and had been seeing that name. One of the people who saw the poster/demo wasn't a native English speaker, but they made an effort to kindly and gently point out the spelling error, with a smile, as if they were trying to save me from the additional embarrassment of showing the error any longer. I thanked them, and didn't tell them.)

jcul 3y ago

I have a Brazilian friend living in Ireland, who went for this route, of easy to spell / pronounce for Irish English speakers.

beAbU 3y ago

My name is pronounced differently in my home language vs English. My close English speaking friends and colleagues pronounce my name the "correct" way, according to my native language. Acquaintances, distant colleagues and new people I meet will pronounce it the Engish way. I've learned to react to both pronounciations.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> Do you want the same pronunciation? This is also fairly easy in many languages, but the spelling is likely to differ. An example of this might be Hannah versus Hana (English / Czech). > Do you want both? For most languages, the list will be extremely short, perhaps half a dozen names such as "Anna". As a sanity check, I looked up wikipedia's page on Czech phonology, which indicates that the vowel [æ] does not exist in Czech. That by itself will absolutely prevent the English names Hannah /'hænə/ or Anna /'ænə/ from matching any possible Czech pronunciation. I'm kind of curious how you came up with the examples. (Ali is a name that will transfer well across many languages.) > In this scenario, you're effectively going by two differently-pronounced names in all face-to-face interactions, not that different from the folks from China or India who are adopting "Westernized" names abroad. People can overlook what I consider stupid obvious requirements in this kind of scenario. I knew a Chinese girl who used the English name Cynthia. It's a perfectly respectable English name; the only problem was that she was completely unable to pronounce "Cynthia", making it a challenge for her to communicate her own name to English speakers. I don't understand why Chinese speakers don't put more [any] emphasis on using names that they are themselves able to pronounce, like Tina or Julie.

dmoy 3y ago
> don't understand why Chinese speakers don't put more [any] emphasis on using names that they are themselves able to pronounce, like Tina or Julie. Some are assigned an English name by their first English teacher in school. This English teacher themselves may not really be able to speak English (e.g. this is the case for more than one person in my family). By the time they figure out otherwise, it's kinda stuck/habit.

edanm 3y ago

Yes, this is a hard problem given different pronunciations etc. We actually looked for a tri-lingual name for our kids, English Hebrew and Spanish. Luckily the Hebrew alphabet is different so that wasn't a problem in terms of spelling, but we had a lot of discussions around how to spell names that have different spellings in English vs. Spanish. We went with names that are not native-Hebrew, but are easy to pronounce in all three languages.