I’m Finnish, my husband is American, we live in the US and are expecting our daughter to arrive in the next couple of weeks. For a long time, one Finnish girl’s name has resonated with me more than any other – Aava (pronounced ah-vah). It’s a very pretty and quite unusual girl’s name in Finland – but since we live in the US, the name has to work here as well.
I have two main concerns. Although it’s a simple short name, I’ve been told that the double vowels of Finnish names throw Americans off. And secondly, I wouldn’t want the name to get mixed up with [name_f]Ava[/name_f] (ay-va) given that it’s such an over-popular girl’s name.
So what I’d like to get your input on is: If you saw the name Aava written, would you hesitate how to pronounce it? Does it feel too exotic or awkward for Americans? [name_m]How[/name_m] likely would you be to assume it’s simply a variant spelling of [name_f]Ava[/name_f]?
At first sight I would pronounce Aava “OH-vah” because double A’s/Å in Denmark are pronounced as “oh”. I think it easily could be confused with/misspelled and mispronounced as [name_f]Ava[/name_f] - sadly because I think the [name_m]AH[/name_m]-vah pronunciation is intriguing.
To me, the Aa seems a fairly “obvious” pronounciation (ie, I’m not sure how else you would pronounce Aa), so hopefully that would save any confusion with [name_f]Ava[/name_f]. But I guess some people might see it as just a weird spelling of [name_f]Ava[/name_f]. I’m not American though (NZer) so not quite sure what things are like over there.
Aava is intriguing and beautiful! At first I was like, “Oh, no, does [name_f]Ava[/name_f] have to get any more trendy?!” The only prn. I could conceive was AY-vah still, but now that I understand, I really like it! It has a soft, lilting sound, and I’d love to meet a little Aava. As for how usable it is… I can’t really say. But we have all sorts of international names here, surely Aava would work, too? It doesn’t look too crazy, and I’m sure people would adjust once they understand.
It’s a beautiful name but here in [name_u]America[/name_u] I think it will just seem like a trendy/unique spelling of [name_f]Ava[/name_f]. [name_f]Ava[/name_f] is mega popular here and so is the trend of purposely misspelling names so it may be a constant battle to get people to spell and say Aava correctly
It’s going to look like a kr8f spelling of [name_f]Ava[/name_f] to most Americans until you explain it and I think pronunciation will be a big problem. But I don’t think those things should necessarily stop you from using it.
I like it a lot. It reminds me of Hebrew [name_f]Ahava[/name_f] (uh-hah-vah) which I think sounds beautiful also.
I think that when it’s written, though, most will assume it’s trendy or a misspelt variation of [name_f]Ava[/name_f]. Or even if they don’t make assumptions, they’ll definitely want to pronounce it like [name_f]Ava[/name_f] (in the US anyway, where I believe it’s ultra-common) or even worse, missread it as [name_f]Ava[/name_f].
HOWEVER - I still think it’s a wonderful name, and cultural heritage is really important to me so I hope I haven’t been too discouraging! Because in this case, I would certainly use it regardless of the issues she might have. I think it’s really special for her to have a name that links to her mother’s language/culture as well, and Aava isn’t overly-foreign looking or sounding at all.
(Plus names in the US are surely so culturally diverse (and made up!) now that almost everyone will have to spell out there name? I don’t know. [name_m]Just[/name_m] speculation, but I feel this may be the generation of children who grow up being asked ‘‘how do you say that?’’ regardless of their name. It’s not all [name_f]Janes[/name_f] and [name_f]Marys[/name_f] anymore!)