Yoana or Yohanna? Registry office tomorrow!

[CandidPlum]

I’ve recently had a baby girl and DH and I have really struggled to come up with a name we both liked and that felt ‘right’ and like her - so much so that we had to postpone our registration appt. Added complication is that the name has to work in both our native languages (English and German).

We now have just 24 hrs until the appt, can’t postpone again, and I’m still dithering between Yohanna and Yoana. I love both and am slightly panicking that I’ll go for the wrong option - lack of sleep probably doesn’t help! DH is happy with both so has left the decision to me.

Does anyone have thoughts on either name please before I drive myself completely up the wall going back and forth between them?

The letter Y is rarely used in the German language - the letter J in German has a similar sound to the letter Y in English.

I think Yohanna gives you neither a German nor an English spelling.

Yohanna in Spanish is pronounced similarly to a soft English J sound, in Hebrew, it is pronounced similarly to an English Y sound.

In Greece Ioanna (that's an i at the front) is pronounced 'yoanna' - lovely name!

If Yohanna isn't a "proper" spelling but a compromise for English speakers, I'd go with the Johanna spelling and just tell people how to say it, they will soon learn.

No, the “least bad” way is to make no assumptions at all and simply to state your frame of reference. Surely you don’t think that rhotic speakers read all texts originating from outside their native region in an internal Joanna Lumley voice, just in case?

Let me give you an example. Every kids’ birthday card section has at least one card in it featuring a lion or a dinosaur and the words “have a Roarsome birthday!”. In my head I read it as “Roarrsome” every single time and have to remind myself that it is a pun if you don’t pronounce your “r” sound.

A small minority of people in the UK have rhotic accents
Really?

I think you're overestimating the average person's awareness of this stuff. It sounds like you are have a rhotic accent and you live in a mostly non-rhotic country (even if you live in NI or Scotland, the "Roarsome" cards you see in the shops are developed for a general UK market, and I'm sure you wouldn't see them if you lived in the US). Therefore, you are very aware of it - and it sounds like you have advanced knowledge of linguistics which gives you the terminology to explain this. Most people on MN are non-rhotic English speakers who just have no reason to ever give this much thought, nor the knowledge to unpick it. You will be waiting a very long time for the typical Baby Names post to start off "So, I'm a non-rhotic speaker living in a non-rhotic region, and therefore I'd describe the sound I'm looking for as Arna", and you'll be waiting just as long for other posters to understand it. I think it's the sad fate of rhotic speakers (you) and pedants (me) to have a slight heart-sinking feeling when we see pronunciations transcribed this, and then to shake it off!

Could Yolanda/Jolanda work?

My rough calculation was considering the population of Scotland and NI, vs England and Wales. So yes, small minority. I know rhotic accents exist in England, but they are also a very small minority in England. Very "back of a fag packet", but I stand by it until corrected with a better calculation!

@MegMarchHare , one way round it is to write something like Moana as Mo-a(r)-na or Mo-aa-na. The IPA is [məʊˈɑːnə].

It depends on whether you want that H pronounced.
I would read them as :
Yo Hannah with a stress on the H
Yo Anna to rhyme with spanner.
(NW UK)

Quite outing but we have a Yanna - and also made the decision to go for a spelling with a Y, even though in my home country it would be spelled with a J.
I didn’t want her name to have the English J sound but the Dutch J sound .

I think I prefer Yoana from your list, as it’s quite quirky, whereas Yohanna looks more ‘misspelt’ with a Y.

But the problem is, @TimeandMotion , that there has to be a reference to a 'standard' for there to be a common understanding. You yourself suggested the International Phonetic Alphabet. But in order to understand the sound indicated by the IPA symbol, there have to be key word examples. And these examples are given in received pronunciation which is non rhotic.

So the symbol for the vowel sound we are discussing is the long vowel ɑ: and the references words include fast, car, hard, bath. And we're right back at the beginning! Many people in real life will not pronounce these words in RP (either using a short a sound or including a rhotic r). So you need to know RP in order to use the key.

It would be most accurate if all attempts at spelling phonetically were using received pronunciation because then at least there is a standard to refer to... But I don't imagine that happening.

See, the IPA works for me, but most people aren't familiar. (Wouldn't it be nice if we could have it as a sticky on the Baby Names topic 😂)

Of your other two versions, I think the bracketed (r) would raise questions, and the "aa" could be interpreted as a longer version of the "a" in "cat", rather than the more open vowel at the start of "father". (Cue someone saying there is no such distinction in their accent 😅)

I think you have misunderstood, I said clearly that the person trying to represent a word “phonetically” should say what type of dialect they were using for reference, in other words, their choice of “standard”. So for example, saying “If you are from SE England, it would be Mo-ar-na”.

You actually see it in foreign language learning sources which use English dialects as a reference for sounds that don’t exist in RP, for example an instruction in a Spanish learners’ text to pronounce “j” like the “ch” in Scottish “loch”.

@MegMarchHare , me too. I'm a Welsh speaker and the a in Siân is a long aa sound so the description of it as Sharn looks absurd to me.

@TimeandMotion , How about Moana (Mo-ar-na, non-rhotic) or something?

@MegMarchHare I think it's the sad fate of rhotic speakers (you) and pedants (me) to have a slight heart-sinking feeling when we see pronunciations transcribed this, and then to shake it off!

True dat 😀. I think I am both.

I don’t think it can ever be assumed that people would know what “rhotic” means, so you’d have to say something more cumbersome like “assuming a dialect in which “r” after a vowel is silent but lengthens the vowel” . Or just use an “h” instead?

Haha, I get like this with bath/grass/fast (which I don't say the RP way), so I can empathise 😅

@BridgeOverTheRiverWye right on cue, haha! It's a minefield 😂

I understood what you were saying @TimeandMotion but I'm pointing out that your suggestion wouldn't necessarily help. You're expecting posters to understand their own accent and how it may differ from all other accents . Geography is not necessarily helpful.

I was actually suggesting that the writer pick an accent other than their own for reference. How about using a well-known person’s accent as the frame of reference then? Joanna Lumley?

(I hesitate to say “the Queen” though because there is a long debate about “the Queen’s English, RP and how QEII actually spoke and how her pronunciation changed over the years, not to mention that people now get confused about who “the Queen” is referring to!).

I think that's also very optimistic... I have had grown, educated adults tell me things like that Cockneys (as opposed to posh Londoners) pronounce "bath" with a short "a", and that Americans pronounce Diana with an R at the end. And these are accents they have heard on TV every day. A lot of people are just not very good at imagining how other people speak. Think how bad many of us are at doing accents!

@TimeandMotion , I don’t think it can ever be assumed that people would know what “rhotic” means, so you’d have to say something more cumbersome like “assuming a dialect in which “r” after a vowel is silent but lengthens the vowel” .
I think think they'd soon learn, and the cumbersome description isn't particularly clear.

Or just use an “h” instead?
But ah is used to indicate a short a (cat is kaht) not ah like in 'Ah! Bisto'.
Same with oh - mown is not mohn, dog is dohg.

This has become a huge derail, all my fault OP, apologies.

Funny you say about recognising vs doing accents @MegMarchHare . I reckon I have a really good ear for different varieties of English and often play the game with DH of guessing where someone on TV comes from then checking it on Wikipedia (sad!). However I cannot imitate any English accent to save my life, despite living in the SE for most of my adult life. Yet I am really good at doing the accents in languages I have learned (I speak 3 European languages to a high standard through study and living abroad and always got complimented by my teachers). So I can’t shake off the ingrained Scottish unless I am starting from a completely blank slate. Fascinating.

They’d learn but you’d need to say it once each time for each new audience.

I wouldn’t personally read “kaht” as a short “a” cat but if you would then I agree it doesn’t work. Double the letter then, baath?

See, I totally disagree with you about "ah" and "oh"! That's why this is impossible and we should instead be campaigning for schoolchildren to learn the IPA, or maybe Esperanto 😂