Thoughts on Israeli Names?

[Anonymous]

Hello all - I'm curious to know you're thoughts on potentially hard to say correctly/commonly mispronounced names. For some context, we live in a very Jewish area where Israeli/Hebrew names are very popular. My DH was born in Israel and our son's name is Nadav. I don't think I've ever heard anyone mispronounce his name.

I'm pregnant with a girl and we've got a few names on the list - Maytal, Adina and Sivan, Sivan being the front runner. Again, I'm sure many people in our area will know and/or make an attempt to learn to pronounce the name but of course, she will not be spending every day of her life in our neighborhood. So my questions are 1) How would you pronounce this name? and 2) Do you believe in giving your children "American" names that are not commonly mispronounced to cut down on constantly having to correct people? I feel that I am a bad judge of this as I have a pretty common name that still gets mispronounced all the time! It doesn't really bother me but I know others have different experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hello all - I'm curious to know your thoughts on potentially hard to say correctly/commonly mispronounced names. For some context, we live in a very Jewish area where Israeli/Hebrew names are very popular. My DH was born in Israel and our son's name is Nadav. I don't think I've ever heard anyone mispronounce his name.

I'm pregnant with a girl and we've got a few names on the list - Maytal, Adina and Sivan, Sivan being the front runner. Again, I'm sure many people in our area will know and/or make an attempt to learn to pronounce the name but of course, she will not be spending every day of her life in our neighborhood. So my questions are 1) How would you pronounce this name? and 2) Do you believe in giving your children "American" names that are not commonly mispronounced to cut down on constantly having to correct people? I feel that I am a bad judge of this as I have a pretty common name that still gets mispronounced all the time! It doesn't really bother me but I know others have different experiences.

And as soon as I hit submit I see a typo

[Anonymous]

Sigh van

[Anonymous]

Nay dave

[Anonymous]

Metal

[Anonymous]

I'm Jewish, fwiw. Adina was one of the top names on my baby list, fwiw, but we had boys. So, love adina, and also love Sivan. Maytal is nice too, but I feel for some reason people would pronounce it weird and southern like?

[Anonymous]

A dinah

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nay dave

Really?

[Anonymous]

I'm not Jewish. But I have a hard to pronounce name, and most people get it wrong. At this point, I have given up and accept 2 names - the right pronunciation, and the wrong one. If the wrong one is used, I just pretend they are correct and move along.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nay dave

Really?

That’s what I’d say if I saw it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nay dave

Really?

That’s what I’d say if I saw it.

+1

[Anonymous]

My hebrew name is Adina. Nobody has EVER mispronounced it. My "real" (legal) name is Sharon. I've been surprised by how much it gets mispronounced. Sharon, Cheryl, Sheronne, etc.

So, that's my way of saying consider Adina as your front-runner. Also, consider that when reading the name Sivan, people won't know if that's a male or female name.

[Anonymous]

Adina Howard did wonders for normalizing Adina.
I have an unusual name, and whatever. Living in the US, I would not give a first name where one of the sounds did not exist in the common language (e.g. the gutteral ch sound from Hebrew, a flipped or gutteral r sound that was defining for the name, etc.)

[Anonymous]

Y’all would really say Nadav as nay-dave? Truly bizarre.

[Anonymous]

1) Nah-dahv and see-vaan?

2) No.