With the readers’ permission, I’m going to speak in the first person: it has happened to me hundreds of times. In Spanish my name (Juan) is very common, but for native English speakers, for some unknown reason, its pronunciation is an enigma. It doesn’t matter that I introduce myself as Juan (with emphasis on the J), they almost always repeat it as Guan, unable to accept the initial J sound. It’s reassuring to know that it’s not a personal problem: the The name Juan has about 300,000 pronunciation problems, according to WordFinderX.
This website selected and classified a list of 12,768 names and their origins using Nameberry.com, a website that explains the origin and meaning of names. They then looked up how many times each of these names had been heard on Forvo.com, an online pronunciation library, to determine What are the worst pronounced names in the world?.
At the top of the list is the name Sean, whose pronunciation is very similar to John, with approximately 1 million views on Forvofar surpassing second place Xuxa, a name of Portuguese origin (although WordFinderX says Basque). The podium is completed by Victoria, followed by Francisco, Anna (sixth place), Estrella (seventh), Benjamín (ninth), María (eleventh), David (fifteenth), Laura (eighteenth place) and Juan (nineteenth).
The name Anna may cause confusion, but many English-speaking countries do not pronounce the final A, others distinguish Anne from Ann, pronouncing the e like an elongated I and so on…
The Spanish version of the Latin alphabet tends to confuse English speakers. The use of a double L, for example, is a very Spanish digraph: a combination of two letters that create a new sound (like ph making an f sound in English). Estrella and Guillermo are Spanish names that are often mispronounced because they follow this pattern.
But the sounds Spanish vowels also confuse foreign languagesAnd although the pronunciation of Spanish letters is more consistent than in many languages, a name like Luz also lends itself to confusion or incorrect pronunciation.
These are the 20 worst-pronounced Spanish names. And Juan is on the podium (probably for the first and only time).