Name Pronunciation Guide

The 7ESL Name Pronunciation guide tells you how to say more than 65,000 first names and surnames correctly. Search a name and you get its phonetic respelling, its IPA transcription and audio, with American and British variants where they differ. Whether you are a teacher reading a new class list, a recruiter making a first call, or simply meeting someone whose name you have only seen written down, the right pronunciation is one search away.

Why names are the hardest words

Names break every spelling rule English has, because most of them come from somewhere else: Vietnamese, Polish, Igbo, Tamil, Gaelic. The letters on the page often encode the sounds of another language entirely, which is why Nguyen, Siobhan and Nguyen-like spellings defeat even fluent speakers. A name also carries more weight than any other word: getting it right is a small act of respect, and getting it wrong - repeatedly - is something people remember. That is why this guide exists as a dedicated tool rather than a footnote in a dictionary.

How to use the guide

Type a first name or surname into the box and matching entries appear as you type. Open an entry to see the respelling in plain English letters with the stressed syllable in capitals, the precise IPA for learners who read it, and a Listen button that speaks the name aloud. Where a name is said differently in American and British English, both variants are listed; where several pronunciations are genuinely accepted, the entry shows them all and says so. Each page links to other names that start the same way, so browsing a family of names is easy.

A guide that keeps growing

The database behind the tool holds over 180,000 names in total, and entries move into the published guide as their pronunciations are verified. Curated entries are checked by hand; the rest are derived from trusted pronunciation lexicons and marked for review until a human signs them off, so what you see is honest about its confidence. If you also need to spell a name out loud on the phone, the Spell My Name tool turns it into NATO letters in one click.