Hadassah/Dassa/Dasha Pronunciation?

[name_f]Hadassah[/name_f] & [name_f]Hadasha[/name_f] have been on and off my list for a couple years and I just recently found the shorter form of [name_f]Dassa[/name_f] (and [name_f]Dasha[/name_f] as a short form of the [name_f]Hadasha[/name_f] spelling or a form of Daria), which I’m liking very much. [name_f]My[/name_f] question is whether these are pronounced DAW-suh and DAW-shuh or only ever DASS-uh and DASH-uh? (The name sites I checked say the latter but I wanted to check if maybe they weren’t the only common pronunciations out there.)

Thank you in advance!

I don’t really see them being pronounced daw-suh / daw-shuh? Their languages of origin (Hebrew and Russian) wouldn’t use that sound, as far as I’m aware - but I don’t know any Hebrew, only Russian, so I could be wrong! Regardless of origin, I would never think to pronounce either of them with a “daw” sound naturally. English isn’t my first language, so take that with a grain of salt if you’re from an English-speaking country, your go-to pronunciations may be different from what I’m used to!

USA here, I would say Ha-dah-sa and Ha-dash-uh automatically, as well as D-ah-ssa and D-ah-sha.

To get the other pronunciation of the vowel, I would think Daussa and Dausha.

I knew a girl named D@sha! she pronounced it like [name_u]Sasha[/name_u] with a D. I think that would be an easy pronunciation to get in the US, considering the popularity of [name_u]Sasha[/name_u] and [name_f]Tasha[/name_f]. I think [name_f]Dasha[/name_f] looks much sleeker too, and I would pronounce Dausha like DOW-sha (first syllable sounding like “doubt”).

1 Like

In Hebrew, [name_f]Hadassah[/name_f] is pronounced Ha-DAH-sah, with the “dah” rhyming with the American pronunciation of salt. The flat “a” sound like in cat, which is what I’m guessing you’re referring to with the second one, doesn’t exist in Hebrew, so in Hebrew [name_f]Dassa[/name_f] or [name_f]Dasha[/name_f] would automatically be pronounced like [name_u]Sasha[/name_u], like @SparkleNinja18 said!

5 Likes

@SparkleNinja18 @baya44 “rhymes with Sasha” is what I was trying to convey haha, thank you! That’s the pronunciation I automatically think of and prefer (I didn’t know if it was my familiarity with Spanish that was doing it though.) I had imagined it would rhyme with [name_u]Sasha[/name_u] in Hebrew but don’t know the language.

@tallemaja If I understand you correctly the Russian [name_f]Dasha[/name_f] derived from [name_f]Darya[/name_f] would never rhyme with [name_u]Sasha[/name_u] (US pronunciation)? Is [name_u]Sasha[/name_u] pronounced with a flat “a” as in “sash” or “cat” in Russian? [name_u]Or[/name_u] are you just saying [name_f]Dasha[/name_f] is just never pronounced otherwise in Russian? I’m a little confused by this.

1 Like

I don’t really know what the American pronunciation of Sasha is! But Dasha and Sasha definitely rhyme in Russian! A Russian “a”, as in Саша (Sasha) & Даша (Dasha), is only ever pronounced one way, “ah” like in car, cat, etc. So I was saying that because of that, Dasha would never be pronounced daw-sha in Russian! I hope that makes more sense x

1 Like

Definitely “aw” !

1 Like

Agree- [name_f]Hadassah[/name_f] is always pronounced Ha-DAH-sa (sounds like salt, not cat) and Dassah would be pronounced the same way. Not sure about Hadasha/Dasha as I haven’t heard those before.

1 Like