[name_m]Hi[/name_m] Berries! I’m new to posting, but have lurked for a while.
I’m a Mexican woman married to an American Jewish man and we’ve recently started trying for a baby. We experienced a miscarriage, but are trying again, actually. So we did start talking about names. But I’m having anxiety around pronunciation cross-culturally and having a little extra difficulty because of an honor name requirement.
You may know that in Jewish tradition it’s common to honor a baby by giving them a name that starts with the same letter as the name of a deceased loved one. In my husband’s case, he wants to honor his late father [name_u]James[/name_u] (who went by Jim) with our first child’s name, which I respect.
[name_f]My[/name_f] problems: (i) in Spanish the “J” sound is pronounced like “H”, and [name_f]English[/name_f] speakers have lots of trouble with it in names (think - [name_m]Juan[/name_m], [name_m]Jorge[/name_m], [name_m]Jesus[/name_m], I always hear them mispronounced); (ii) when it’s not pronounced as “J” it can be pronounced as “Y”, but that’s not how an [name_f]English[/name_f] speaker would read them, ex., [name_u]Jael[/name_u], [name_f]Jazmín[/name_f]. (iii) There’s a converse problem from [name_f]English[/name_f] to Spanish, where the [name_f]English[/name_f] “J” is hard to pronounce or has a different pronunciation for the same spelling, ex., [name_m]Jeremy[/name_m] would be pronounced “Yeremy” by a native Spanish speaker or, ex., [name_m]Jeronimo[/name_m] in Spanish is Her-o-nee-mo, in [name_f]English[/name_f] it’s Jyer-oh-nee-mo.
[name_f]My[/name_f] husband really likes the name [name_u]Jaime[/name_u] , because it’s the Hispanic form of [name_u]James[/name_u]. But I’m worried people would mess up the pronunciation a lot, and read it as “Jay-mee” rather than “Hai-meh”.
Could you help me get out of my head about this and think up names that would cross the border easily that still feel like they’re acknowledging their mother’s (my) background?
I want to avoid names that are too American or [name_f]English[/name_f] sounding, like [name_u]Jack[/name_u] or [name_u]Jordan[/name_u] or [name_f]Jenny[/name_f]. If necessary I prefer names that skew European or foreign, like [name_m]Johan[/name_m].
No gender yet obviously so I would love some girl options too.
tl;dr: I want to give any future child a name that travels easily, and Js are hard. Help me come up with ideas! Thank you so much!
