How would you pronounce Ješca?

[ChesterBelloc]

As above!

Am interested to see if anyone comes up with the pronunciation that I'm aiming for...

Jess-kuh

I would have said yeshka

bellini, Iscah is mentioned once in the Bible: daughter of Haran, niece of Abraham, sister of Lot. In Hebrew it's written Yiskāh, I believe.

The Biblical name is believed to be the source of Shakespeare's Jessica in The Merchant of Venice (Shylock's daughter) - the first 'modern' usage of the name; apparently in Shakespeare's time the Biblical name would have been written 'Jesca'.

I don't know whether to officially name her Jessica, and then use Ješca as her semi-official nick-name, or go the whole hog and put Ješca on her birth certificate...?

Jess-ca was my first instinct.

I must say I am pleasantly surprised at the number of people who 'guessed right' the pronunciation I was hoping for with that notation!

I would have guessed yeshka and would assume polish heritage. I’m not sure why, I think I must have seen similar in other polish names? There are loads of polish people in my city.

I would have guessed Yeshka. But I do also have a linguistics background.

Thanks for the background @ChesterBelloc - love that kind of info

Never heard before but if I had to address someone with it wrote down I'd say Jeshka.

The accent on the S is one used in Czech and Slovak. So I would assume Czech heritage. Why did you use this accent, and not just call her Jeshka or Yeshka?

Jezka

Taught a few Polish/Czech students and would have said Yesh-kah.

It's not Polish as the 'sh' sound is represented by 'sz' in Polish. But I have a very above-average knowledge of the phonetics of European languages; I would expect most people to get it wrong. And unless you have a Czech or Slovak background I think it's a very odd choice, sorry.

I think I'd have guessed Jess-cah (like trying to say "Jessica" in two syllables

Me too. But I really like your spelling and pronunciation, massively more than Jessica Please don't dilute it!

I'd have taken an educated guess at Yesh-kah.

š is pronounced 'sh' across Eastern Europe.

Yeshka (probably) unless the 'c' is a 'ts'

meditrina only in certain languages! It doesn't exist in Polish, Hungarian, or Romanian, for example. I agree also in Serbo-Croatian and related languages (Slovenian) but then as you say the 'c' would be 'ts' which is almost certainly not what the OP intended

I’d hesitantly say Jess-ca because I know the accent would change it but not sure how!

"Why did you use this accent, and not just call her Jeshka or Yeshka*?"
*
I haven't done anything yet, MrsSchadenfreude - she's due in August. I'm just playing around with ideas at the moment. Don't really like how Yeshka looks written down, though that is my preferred pronunciation, so found the 'š' thanks to Google!

I would not know so I would ask how it should be pronounced.

I'd say Jes-ka. Which I think is how Jesca Hoop pronounces her name.

Although she is Jessica on her birth certificate

And yes, I wouldn't know what the squiggle does so would ignore it.

Well, of course it isn't pronounced in the language where it doesn't exist!!

But where it does, it's 'sh' - across all Eastern European languages which have a š

So if OP wants 'yeshka' with a diacritic, then I'd spell it Ješka

When you put the name in the title you'll get more people getting it right or nearly right because they know already or can work it out from the knowledge they have, whereas most people think "I dunno" and keep scrolling. I would also go for Jess-ca and wait to be corrected.

Also accents can be confusing when filling in online forms etc for anyone who doesn't normally use them. My DSis, DNeice and DNephew have one in their last name and I can never remember the keyboard shortcut so end up having to copy the symbol from Word- and it's just á, which is a common one. No matter what they put on a form, 9 times out of ten I t gets dropped when someone else is typing it out. With no š it looks like an interesting spelling of Jessica.