Part of growing up Brown in the West is the experience of living with two different pronunciations of your name: The one your parents and a few other people use, and the one that everyone else, like our teachers, friends and coworkers, use. Given the fact that our names aren’t of English origin, and leverage sounds that can be difficult for many Anglophones to pronounce, most of us are okay with the fact with the idea that our “everyone else” names don’t perfectly match that of our “real” names (Editor’s note – Okay, we can already tell this going to be annoying. Let’s go with A-names being our “real” names and B-names being the “everyone else” names).
That said, our B-names actually could be A LOT more accurate than they are. In fact, to be honest, a lot of us kind of hate our B-names, with their stilted sound and syncopation, and would much rather hear something closer to the truth. At the same time, for a variety of reasons, it also happens that a lot of us don’t want to go through the trouble of correcting people, and just end up accepting whatever they throw at at us for a B-name, no matter how irritating we might secretly find it.
Here’s the thing, though. A lot of the time our B-names, even if we don’t like them, are kind of our own fault. Just because the names aren’t English in origin doesn’t mean we couldn’t do a hell of a lot better job of SPELLING them. Our ancestors straight up chose the wrong letters to use, there’s no way around it. (Ed. – I mean, in theory, we could start spelling them more accurately, but if Irish people won’t do it, why should we? Seriously, how the hell did ‘Siobhan’ happen?).
Anyway, with that in mind, we thought we’d throw out some helpful tips on pronouncing South Asian names more accurately. Bear in mind, though, we’re not linguists, so we’re just trying to ballpark it, here, no fancy symbols or anything, and of course there are exceptions to the rules. (Ed. – Also, the Brown folks on our staff are all Punjabis, and our explanations will be heavily skewed to Punjabi pronounciations. South Asia has hundreds of languages, with thousands of dialects, not all of which are significantly related. Hell, Punjabi has many dialects of its own, so even these won’t be 100% accurate. Actually, maybe you should just stop reading altogether).
Okay, let’s start with the vowels.
Great, this is the best place to begin, as they’re generally the offending source of the most flawed B-names (Ed. – Those and jay, we have a lot to say about jay..).
A – A is probably the most common of all the letters you see in names. It’s typically pronounced more like the u in “jug”, occasionally it has an ‘ah’ sound (particularly when there’s an a at the very end of a name), and sometimes it’s sort of just a placeholder that isn’t really pronounced at all. What’s key to know, though, is that in someone’s name it is almost NEVER pronounced like the a in “can”. For example, if you see a name with “man” in it, it’s, usually pronounced “munn”, or “mn”. Less frequently is “mahn”, and, in fact, this case is often addressed by spelling it “maan” for clarity. (Ed. – Our condolences to everyone who giggles whenever they see the name “Manmeet”. Also, no, we never saw “Outsourced”).
E – A solitary e in a name is typically pronounced something along the lines of “ay”, as in “say” or “hay”. If you see the suffixes “esh” or “ekh” in a name, they’re generally meant to be something like “aysh” or “ake” as in “lake”. A double-e IS however pronounced how you’d expect, though it tends to seem a little “longer” than you’d typically use it in English (Ed. – Somewhere between Blackthorne and our beloved queen-of-the-side-eye, Fuji-sama), but no reasonably person should fault someone for pronouncing like a typical, English, double-e. As an aside, in some place names, like Delhi, the e is pronounced more like the i in “sit”.
I – Sometimes an i in a name is pronounced similarly to the word “sit” (Ed. – That’s the case for the word “Sikh”. It’s not “seek”, it’s actually more like “sick”.. but.. we get it). Often, though, it’s pronounced like a double-e. The i in suffixes like jit, dip, dish, mit, vir, gir, and nish, are all pronounced like the double-e in “speed”.
O – Oes are typically long, as in the word “lone”. A double-o is usually pronounced as you’d expect, as though in the word “soon”, but, on occasion it’s actually just a long o. Gun to your head, go for a standard double-o in that case.
U – If you see a u in a name, depending on where it is, it’s often meant to be pronounced like the double-o in “took”, but also occasionally like the double-o in “soon”. (Ed. – The prefix “Sukh” which you often see in names is not pronounced “suck” but rather “sook”, like Sookie Stackhouse, our apologies for ruining one of Russell Peters’s classic jokes).
Now, the consonants.
If you’re exhausted, the vowels are enough to help you get by reasonably well. If you just pronounce the consonants the standard English way, you’re doing all right. Punjabi, for example, has several more individual sounds than English, there are multiple ways to pronounce the sound made by the letter dee, for example. That said, in the interest of completeness, here are a few other good-to-knows. (Ed. – Honestly, we’d recommend just going with what feels natural, if you try too hard to make the correct sound, you have a high probability of seeming obnoxious).
B – The pronunciation of B kind of varies between the letter bee and the letter pee, sometimes a letter like aitch (H) is used to make it more clear, but, it’s frankly, not consistent. More on that later.
D – Most of the time, in a name, a dee, is actually somewhat softened relative to the English letter. Its tone is more like something halfway between a standard dee and the sound “th”. You’d make it by pressing the tip of your tongue a littler lower than you normally would, against the back of your upper incisors. Less frequently, it’s more like a mix between a dee and a tee. It’s another one of those letters that is often aitch-modified, like bee, but it’s usage is not consistent. (Ed. – Again, from here on out is just an information session, don’t hurt yourself).
H – Aitches in the middle of a name, often search the purpose of altering the pronunciation of the preceding letter. Sometimes they’re VERY soft, or indicate a kind of tonal shift, kind of like adding in a new syllable with an apostrophe. They can be a little tricky, because often, in those cases the degree to which they are pronounced varies across languages and dialects. (Ed. – A good trick is, if you see an aitch anywhere but at the beginning of the name, just ignoring it often provides a reasonable approximation).
J – Okay, we NEED to talk about “Jay”. We don’t know who the hell told White people that the jay in names is pronounced like a French gee, but it isn’t. It’s a normal, plain old English jay. This might be the single most annoying mispronunciation of them all. (Ed. – Seriously, the name “Raj” is three letters, it’s the easiest name in the world, how the hell did you guys manage to turn it into “Raaaaazsch”?).
K – Often kays, are a bit “harder” than a standard kay, they’re pronounced a little further back in your mouth, adding a natural aitch sound to them. An example is the word “Sikh”. Once again, though, it’s not consistent. A normal kay never hurt anyone.
N – For the most part ens are how you’d expect them to be, but when a name, especially a last name ends in “on”, it’s actually more of a modifier of the preceding o, to make it sound more nasally. Like if you say the word “own” with plugged nose.
R – Something a little more universal to every language that isn’t English, ars are all rolled. The degree to which they are rolled varies, though, some are very slightly rolled, some are very strongly rolled. In fact, you can often simulate many of these ars by instead just inserting a letter d in their place. We’ll throw out some examples, later. (Ed. – Also, if you don’t have a good handle on the various types of ar-rolling we recommend you not try unless you want to seem really obnoxious).
T – Similar to dee, tees are generally softened, to sound a bit more like they’re halfway between an English tee and a the sound “th”. Like making the standard tee sound, but by pressing your tongue up against the back of your upper incisors.
W – Here’s something that’s also pretty universal for many languages, double-us are usually pronounced like the letter vee (V).
Okay, so that covers letters, but, before we get in to using them, let’s add one other final note. Most of the time, whatever syllable might feel natural for an English-speaker to stress, the actual pronunciation is the opposite. A lot of B-names are pronounced with the first syllable stressed, when, for the most part, it should be the last syllable, or nor stressing of any syllable.
Gee, thanks Professor, maybe you can actually give me some useful information?
Well, now that that’s all said and done, here are some famous names and words that you probably see kicking around, respelled in a way that more closely approximates their actual pronunciation.
Note: Below, all cases of U are similar to those in “cup”, and OO as that in “took”. Also, we’ve added apostrophes for the aitches mentioned above, where it can vary the degree to which people pronounce them.
Jagmeet Singh – jug-MEET sing
Sanjay Gupta – sunjay goopta
Delhi – dilly
Bhangra – pungerda
Ravi Shankar – ruvvee shunker (Ed. – In this clip from “The Simpsons”, Krusty’s initial mispronunciation is actually more accurate than “Shankar’s” correction)
Manmohan Singh – munn-MO’N sing
Mohandas – mo’n-DAHS
Taj Mahal – tahj ma’al
Namaste – nuh-MUSS-tay
We hope this has been helpful for you.
You’re totally wrong! I haven’t followed any of your rules above, and I’ve been pronouncing my friend’s name correctly this whole time! They said so!
Or your friend may have done a great job of spelling their name in a more phonetically accurate way.
It is entirely possible, though, that you’ve actually, been pronouncing it “wrong”, but your friend is perfectly fine with that pronunciation, and might even prefer it.
It’s also possible that your friend just doesn’t care enough to be bothered to correct you.
Or, you know, they’re an idiot.
So, if I follow these rules, and try to pronounce someone’s name, I should be fine?
Well, like we said, there ARE exceptions, and all the Brown folks we have on staff are Punjabi, so the rules, as they are, are heavily skewed to those specific spellings and pronunciations. We promise you’ll get pretty close with the names of Punjabi origin, and those of Urdu and Hindi origin, as those languages share similar origins (Ed. – Actually, the latter two are actually different names for the same language, but if anyone asks, we didn’t say that, we are NOT getting into THAT fight). Southern Indian names, like those of Tamil origin, you’re likely to do pretty decent, with too, but they’re less closely related so are more likely to trip up.
At the same time, you could always just ignore everything we wrote, and, y’know, ask them how to say it.
