{"id":11438,"date":"2015-06-26T06:42:34","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T10:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11438"},"modified":"2015-06-26T07:13:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T11:13:09","slug":"baby-naming-issue-how-do-you-pronounce-the-name-jana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/06\/26\/baby-naming-issue-how-do-you-pronounce-the-name-jana\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: How Do You Pronounce the Name Jana?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I’ve been reading your blog for several months now and I love it. My question is this.<\/p>\n

I have a baby sister whose name is Jana. It took my parents ages to come up with a name. She was un-named for several days as my parents and my family tried to come up with one!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was wondering, what is the correct pronunciation for her first name, Jana?<\/p>\n

We pronounce it like Janna (rhymes with Anna). We have, however, run into lots of people who try to call her Yana (I think this is the middle eastern pronunciation??), Jah-na, and even Jane-a!<\/p>\n

So, how would you pronounce it? I don’t really mind what the ‘correct’ pronunciation is, I am just curious as to how you and your readers would say it.<\/p>\n

Thanks awfully!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

As with many names, the name Jana has more than one familiar pronunciation. The question “What is the correct pronunciation?” would be answered in this case with “It rhymes with Anna”—because that is the pronunciation the parents have decided to go with.<\/p>\n

A similar name is Lucia. It can correctly be pronounced loo-SEE-ah, loo-CHEE-ah, or LOO-sha. Another is Helena: heh-LAY-na, HEH-leh-nah, heh-LEE-nah.<\/p>\n

Part of the package deal of a name with multiple pronunciations is that the pronunciation will regularly need to be clarified and corrected. Names with multiple spellings are similar: parents who choose the name Annabel are signing on for the task of saying “two N’s, one L”—and for being patient when they need to correct it on class lists, forms, etc., or when they see it spelled wrong on party invitations, valentines, and letters.<\/p>\n

One of my own preferences is to have a quick and easy way to clarify\/correct. In your little sister’s case, you have a great one: “rhymes with Anna” is quick, easy, and clear for spoken clarifications. In writing, it would be unclear whether Anna was pronounced ANN-ah or AH-na, so I might go with something like “Like the name Jan, but with an -a on the end.” Or “Like the ‘a’ in ‘apple’.”<\/p>\n

If I saw the name Jana on a class list, I would know right away that it could be pronounced several different ways. The first pronunciation that comes to mind is YAH-na (my ancestry is mostly Dutch and German, so Jan-pronounced-Yahn and Jana-pronounced YAH-na are familiar family-tree names), but my first actual guess would be the rhymes-with-Anna version. I would probably say, “JAN-ah, YAH-nah, JAH-nah?” to cover my bases when saying it for the first time. I don’t think I’d guess JAY-nah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be the answer. Worldwide, my guess is that YAH-nah is the most common (the Forvo listing<\/a> is made up almost entirely of YAH-nahs); in the United States, my guess it that JAN-ah is the most common—but the Social Security name lists don’t deal with pronunciation at all, so that’s purely a guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I’ve been reading your blog for several months now and I love it. My question is this. I have a baby sister whose name is Jana. It took my parents ages to come up with a name. She was un-named for several days as my parents and my family tried to come up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Yu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11438"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11447,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11438\/revisions\/11447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}