Saimi/Saima/Seela?

[flybabyfly]

I was having a browse of the top100 Finnish baby names of 2017 for girls and came across these.

What do you think of these names? Do you think they would work in English? How do they sound to you?

The pronunciations are:

Saimi: si-me (“si” as in “Simon”)
Saima: si-mah
Seela: seh-lah

They all sound pretty to me.

I think you would have issues with spelling for any of them, but quite straightforward when you've explained it.

Personally I prefer the last two, and think those are the easiest for English speakers to spell /guess at pronunciation.

I don’t think they translate well into English as people won’t know the correct pronunciation if you plan to pronounce them in the Finnish way but as with any name you tell people what your baby’s name is and they call them that

The names will be pronounced like Say-Me, Say-Ma and See-La most likely

I know a lady called Saima, she is a Muslim though so I thought it was an Islamic name rather than Finnish? It does get mispronounced a lot as Say-ma but it's a nice name 😊