Approaching Names That Aren't Spelled

Cultural Name Trends

English Names

Spanish Names

Spanish orthography is relatively simple.

Letter	Sound	Letter	Sound	Letter	Sound	Letter	Sound
b	b	k	k	r	r	z	th
c	k/th	l	l	s	s	rr	Rolled r
d	d	m	m	t	t	a	ah
f	f	n	n	v	b	e	eh
g	g/h	ñ	canyon	w	w/b	i	ee
h	silent	p	p	x	ks/s	o	oh
j	h	q	k	y	y/ee	u	oo

B: Spanish allows v, b, and sometimes w to all be the b sound.
K: Like English, k, c, and q may all sound like K.
Th: Spanish doesn’t distinguish between Th and S, though most customers will. There is a chance Spanish speaking customers will say Th and use either s, z, or c to represent it.
H/LL: Depending on accent, g, j, and LL might all represent a sound somewhere between English Y and J. Really, only Spanish customers would do this, but Jaramillo might be pronounced "Ha-ra-mee-yo" or "Ha-ra-mee-jo." English customers might say "Ha-ra-mee-lo," unfortunately.

French Names

French orthography is a nightmare. Luckily, it appears to be the same manner of nightmare as English, with the exception of having several more potentially silent letters, as follows: s (sometimes also silences the consonant before), b, d, g, p, t, x, z. The vowels also appear to be very complex, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unexpected for an English spelling. Of note is that "gn" makes the same sound as ñ in many cases.

German Names

German orthography is incredibly similar to English. It does allow for certain letter combinations disallowed in English, like beginning a word with "pf" or "pt." Ch is pronounced as in Bach, obviously. German vowels do have slightly different rules than English’s, mainly that "e" is often added after other vowels to modify it. Our customers may or may not pronounce these correctly — and depending on when the name was imported, it may have the "e" written — so we shouldn’t be surprised to hear Muller spelled Mueller, or vice versa.

Russian & Ukranian Names

Many Slavic languages use similar transliteration systems. The main differences are "y" in places not necessarily allowed in English, J sometimes in place of Y, sometimes Kh for the final sound in Bach, and Zh, which sounds like the s in pleasure. This seems to hold true for Russian and Ukranian.
Some Slavic languages allow words to start with consonant clusters disallowed in English, such as "gd" and "dm." Thus, the name we hear, and often spelled as, Dimitri could also be spelled Dmitri.

Polish Names

Polish orthography is pretty simple, since we don’t have to add any of the marks. Mainly of note, L might be pronounced W in some cases, S might be pronounced similarly to Sh, C could be pronounced as either Ts or Ch. Polish also has some letter combos that don’t sound like either letter: Cz is pronounced like Ch, Dz, Rz, and Sz could be pronounced Sh, and "I" can sometimes sound like "y."

African Names

African names aren't terribly common in our work and there are many places in Africa they could come from. There is also no widespread romanization standard, so it seems like we should more or less take our best guess. That said, there are a few features important to spelling that are more common in Africa, and across much of the continent, than outside, including consonant clusters not allowed at the beginning of English words (bga, mpa, dts, ngo, with "ng" pronounced like the final sound in running).

Hebrew Names

There is no accepted standard of transliteration for Hebrew. Depending on the origin of the word, when it was transliterated, and by whom, it may follow the conventions of Arabic, German, or Yiddish pronunciations. Luckily, it seems that many of the sounds are the same, so we should be able to translate more or less directly, keeping in mind that we might see Dh for Th, Ch for Bach, and that W and V might occasionally be used interchangeably.

Arabic Names

There is no widely accepted standard of transliteration or romanization for Arabic. Consonants are either plain (analogous to English consonants) or "emphatic", meaning they sound "forced out" almost. This is incredibly unlikely to transfer over when customers repeat Arabic names, fortunately, so it probably isn’t much of a concern.
In regard to actually spelling the name, different romanization systems use different tactics, so it’s likely we’ll see apostrophes ('), dashes (-), and seemingly unpronounced Hs, as in Indian spellings. Arabic does have Th, Sh, Ch. W may be pronounced as "oo."

Indian Names

Indian uses, for the most part, the Hunterian Transliteration System. The most common vowel is "a," representing the schwa (the vague vowel noise we use in English for unstressed syllables). Important to note is that "zh" may represent the hard g sound, as in "ledge," and "kh" may represent an H-like sound. Many consonants also have versions with unpronounced Hs, meaning "th" doesn’t make the sound in "the," but rather "top."
Indian names may be very long and customers may rush through them. Importantly, they are all phonetic, with the rules listed above, and where we cannot make out a clear vowel, we should default to "a."

Chinese Names

Chinese Pinyin uses very different rules than English. Depending on where in China the name originated, there can be vastly different spellings. Most importantly, Chinese does not differentiate consonants based on voicing "b vs p." For our work, and considering customers' limited interaction with Chinese, that means that while we might very clearly hear the name "Kang," it might be written "Gang." Chinese words and names may only end in a vowel, "n," or "ng."

Japanese Names

Japanese characters converted into Roman letters (Romaji) follow a set of 5 vowels: a (ah), i (ee), u (oo), e (eh), o (oh). This is combined with 14 consonant sounds: k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w, g, z, d, b, p. The letter n is also used, but it is almost never paired with a vowel sound, but rather used as its own consonant.

Traditionally, family surnames will be used first before the person's first name, as opposed to first name and then last name. However, since most of our callers are American English speakers, they will often stick to first name last name format. Some Japanese American clients of theirs may have an English first name and a Japanese surname.

Korean Names

Just like Chinese, Korean has different distinctions between letters, so we might again hear "g" and have it spelled "k." Additionally, Korean names might contain doubled letters at the beginning of a syllable. Dashes are often used to separate syllables between names, though this is newer and more common among younger people.

Vietnamese Names

Vietnamese pronunciation seems fairly straightforward, with the major departure from English (at least for spelling, and considering customers' familiarity with the language) being that Ng can start a word. This is often pronounced or heard as W, but it’s worth noting for cases such as Nguyen.