Jiya, Maya, Siya or Ruhi? Indian baby girl living in the UK

[meera454]

We have scrapped most of our previous list and are leaning more towards simpler names. What are your thoughts on Jiya, Maya, Siya and Ruhi? Be as brutally honest as you like :)

Really love the name Ruhi in particular but written down it looks a bit incomplete to me? Maybe we could use this as a nickname for Rohini or Ruhani? Ruhi has a beautiful meaning in Hindi.

Aw I love Ruhi and it definitely looks like a full name

Totally love maya

@riddles26 Oh wow 7 girls named Siya! I will definitely have to take that into consideration then, maybe we could use it if we give her a middle name...

@PetraRabbit Thank you! I love Ruhi as well, it's different but not in a weird way. The pronunciation of the ending is important to us, I hope most people will say it in a pleasant way and not like "Jay-o" haha that would be awful!

@PolkadotsAndMoonbeams thank you! :) I think Jiya looks the prettiest written down. Ruhi is not my favourite one when written down...

@Myal That's a lovely choice, beautiful name! I guess a name being popular shouldn't be a hinderance in a decision if you really love it, the popularity of it may die down in a few years.

@GeorgiaGirl52 Anjali is a really pretty name, but I ruled it out because we eventually decided that we wanted something a bit simpler and shorter. We started off with a list of longer names and just decided that short and sweet is what we actually prefer.

@MercyBodle That's good to know, I was worried that maybe Ruhi looks like a NN for Rohini or Ruhani. Maya, we would want it to be pronounced like "Mye-a". Really don't like the May-a pronunciation. I think Maya could potentially be mispronounced a lot judging from the advice that everyone has given.

Do you think Ruhi could be mispronounced as "Roo-hye"?

I don't think so. I think the commonest mispronunciation would be Roo-ey.
We have a few friends with children called Rohan and the ones with an Indian background say ro -HARN and the others pronounce it more like Rowan.
That's why I assumed roo-hee as you mentioned your cultural background. Even if someone calls her rooey once they'll learn quickly. An -eye ending is less likely I think.

All beautiful, I love Siya, Ruhi is gorgeous but Rohini is just gorgeous! If there are lots of Siya then I’d go Rohini with Ruhi nn as then she had the choice of two lovely names. Rohini sounds like she’s going to be presenting the BBC news (in a good way).

I have def encountered more Mayas.

All pretty names, but my favourite is Maya. I am biased though, I have one at home We pronounce it Mye-a, and it does get mispronounced very often as May-a. She is not bothered by that so far, and people quickly learn when you correct them once.

I know a Siya and a Ruhi and love both names. Maya is also super easy too as it’s used in so many cultures.

I would not make Ruhi longer. It’s beautiful as it is but also I do find longer Indian names a bit harder to know how to pronounce and I do get a bit intimidated when I see a long name that I have zero knowledge of written down and have to guess at.

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments, so helpful to know all of this info when making such a big decision! :) A lot of love has been shown towards all four names, so either way I have the peace of mind that whichever one we choose, it will be a good and safe option! One thing that could potentially make the final decision a lot easier is the middle name pairing for each name, what would you pair with these names as a middle name? Our surname has two syllables, so I was thinking that a three syllable middle name will probably sound nicer than three names with two syllables...

I suspect Ruhi will be pronounced either as Roo-hee (with a hard 'h') or Roo-ee (soft 'h') by people who don't know the name.

I think most people would pronounce Maya (My-ah) rather than May-ah, but I might be wrong.

Maya is gorgeous but there are two pronunciations so I’d keep this in mind. I know a girl of Indian heritage called Sia, which I adore. I prefer that spelling to Siya, not sure how authentic it is, I assumed it was until your post.

Ah, I'm glad the h in Ruhi is pronounced - I retract my previous comment! Roo-ee is the most likely mispronunciation there I think, but not tremendously likely; I doubt you'd be correcting people every day.

I'm still on Team Jiya though!

I work in a Hindu faith school where there are lots of Mayas and names like Siya and Jiya. Ruhi is lovely imho but I also like Siya.

Love Ruhi!!

Also consider the last letter of the first name and how it sounds when said together with the surname.

For Instance Ruhi Imani may not flow,

But Ruhi Dewan is pretty.

i like Ruchi/Ruhi

All beautiful but I Iike Ruhi the best too

Ruhi and Siya are my favourite out of those four. Not keen on Jiya and Maya seems both more popular and more likely to be mispronounced.

@CeeceeBloomingdale I have considered the spelling Sia but I feel like it looks too short for a name? Siya looks a bit more complete to my eyes.

@TyroTerf Absolutely! I think that once you tell people that it's Ruhi with a hard 'h' sound, it will be quite memorable and easy. Jiya is beautiful and high up on our list!

@Scabetty Ah that's great to know! I love the names Ruhi and Siya as well but Siya is bit further down the list, for some reason I'm not loving it as much as Ruhi and Jiya.

@speakout Totally agree! Lucky our surname starts with a consonant

@JustCurious2 what makes you less inclined towards Jiya and prefer Siya over Jiya? They are such similar names but we are so confused between these two.

Siya or Jiya? And why? Please help solve our confusion between the two!

My sister is half Indian, we have different dads, she called her daughter Maya and I think its a beautiful name

Siya (in my accent) sounds like saying goodbye, which is the main reason I wouldn't go for it!

In terms of other homophones... sear is better than jeer. But I thought of sear straight away whereas it took a while to remember jeer. And I like J better as a first letter.

Siya sounds like see ya!
And jiya will be spelled Gia.

Don't make life harder to your non white female daughter further by giving her a difficult name. I say this as a non white woman in the UK with a foreign name who had added complications and covert racism due to unusual name.

Give her a universal plain solid name like Laura, Linda, Sara or Mary or something.
If you really must, have that Indian name as her middle name.
You probably have a long difficult surname already.

They are all nice but Ruhi is my favourite. Maya is familiar and would be probably the most common in the UK

Maya is very popular with white parents, so might translate well across cultures.

We were very enamoured for a long while with Somaya (Summaiah). I think that might be Bengali, though.