In a world where celebrities are calling their children Techno Mechanicus, and an Australian journalist named her son Methamphetamine Rules, we’re all getting used to baby names that don’t exactly roll off the tongue.
So it might surprise you to hear that the most commonly mispronounced baby name is actually pretty straight forward.
A new study has found that a boy’s name, popular across the UK and Ireland, is the one we’re all struggling with the most.
What is that tricky moniker we hear you ask? Sean.
The Biblical name is of Irish origin and means ‘God is gracious’ or ‘gift from God’. But it seems people stumbled on the fact that it is pronounced ‘Shawn’, rhyming with words like ‘dawn’ and ‘fawn’.
The research by WordFinderX analysed data from Forvo, a website which teaches people how to pronounce words.
Sean was queried on the website one million times. It was followed by the slightly more tricky Basque name Xuxa (pronounced ‘Shoo-Shuh’), which was entered into the site 802,000 times.
However, other common British names in the top 20 list include Anne, David and Victoria. Which might seem odd to the UK reader, but when you consider it’s a global study, it perhaps makes a little more sense.
Rounding out the top 20 is Saoirse, a name that comes as no surprise to any non-Irish folks out there.
Actress Saoirse Ronan has said she finds it ‘really funny’ how much people struggle with saying her name – and lest we forget the Golden Globes nominations incident in 2015 when actor Dennis Quaid renamed her ‘Shee-Shah’…
The most mispronounced names around the world:
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