[name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] is my newest boy name crush. It’s been on my radar for years, but I never seriously considered it or had it on my list till about a week ago. At the moment I’m loving it, and as I have a good deal of Swedish and Danish heritage I don’t think I’d have to worry about it being too ethnically strange for me to potentially use, though at this point I’m not considering it for a real baby.
[name_m]How[/name_m] do you pronounce it? I had always heard it in my head as rhyming with born and torn, but when I looked at the comments on Behind the Name, it sounded as though it ought to be pronounced to rhyme with burn and yearn. The Swedish and [name_m]German[/name_m] pronunciations on Forvo vary a little; listening to them, I could imagine pronouncing it either way.
[name_f]Bee[/name_f]-ORN, but barely two syllables. But I’m not a native speaker so I’m just basing it off things I’ve heard that are similar, like Bjork.
I didn’t actually hear that much of a difference in the pronunciation of the Swedish and the [name_m]German[/name_m] person.
In [name_m]German[/name_m], the name is spelled Björn. The umlaut gives the “o” a different sound.
I think it’s the same in Swedish, the umlaut being the Ø.
Since you don’t have either in English, [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] would be pronounced Byorn.
J is pronounced like a Y and [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] is like Byorn. That’s how the singer [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] says her name.
And yea, when you umlaut the O, it gets a whole other sound I’ve found most people who speak English can’t do well (I too almost 3 years of [name_m]German[/name_m] in college).
Thanks for the responses so far. Sounds like I should ask my mom for clarification on how the umlaut changes the sound; she’s been studying [name_m]German[/name_m]! I wouldn’t use the umlaut, or the Swedish equivalent (what is the name of the crossed O?) on an American birth certificate, though.
[name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] on a girl…hm…that’s kind of sad.
I had a foreign exchange student in my algebra class in high school named Bjørn. He was pretty nice. Bjørn/Björn/[name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] is technically two syllables [name_f]Bee[/name_f]-yorn, but you saw the first one fairly quickly so it sounds closer to BYORN.
The audio clips are helpful for me. I took a year of [name_m]German[/name_m] in high school and the umlaut is hard to get the exact pronounciation right if you’re not a native speaker but you can get it close.
I actually have [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] on my list as a serious contender as a middle name for a son. Its handsome.
In English, I would say BYORN as well. Here in Denmark, we pronounce it (Bjørn) differently, but I think our pronunciation is too difficult to work in English because of the Ø.
I’d pronounce it Buh-yurn. Sort of. I think the [name_m]German[/name_m]/Swedish pronunciation is how most people who know the name will pronounce it - even without the umlauts it’s the correct pronunciation as far as I can tell from the Swedish and [name_m]German[/name_m] American’s I know. (if that helps).
[name_m]Isaac[/name_m] [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] would be very handsome! I haven’t yet been able to “ideally” pair [name_m]Bjorn[/name_m] with either a first or middle from my lists.
So it sounds as if it would be acceptable for an American to pronounce the name BYORN, particularly for an American child. Does that crossed O have a name?
[name_f]My[/name_f] name (Middlename) IS actually Björn and i’m living in Germany, so i can say that here it’s pronounced about as if it would include the Y from yellow and the O from world or using english spelling roughly like you would expect Biearn or Byearn to sound (one syllable)
