What names are you searching for on NameShouts?
How do you pronounce the most searched name on our platform?
Not to brag, but we pronounce a lot of names on NameShouts.
A looooot of names.
And we’re not about to Marie Kondo our database either. Every name sparks joy. Every name is important. But for this quick piece, we want to take a look at a certain group of names that seem to keep coming up.
We’re diving into our data at NameShouts, and to kick things off, we want to share the most searched names on our platform, and how to pronounce them.
Some of them, like John and James, might surprise you. Others, like Maria and Nguyen, might be a little more expected.
And then there’s names like Missandei and Lannister, which hail from the faraway land of Westeros, the setting of a little-known HBO production called Game of Thrones.
Some of the names are a bit more difficult.
Like Hai, the most searched name on our platform.
Hai has roots in several languages, such as Chinese and Arabic. On NameShouts, we have it in Arabic, Bengali, English, Hebrew, and Vietnamese.
In Hebrew and Arabic, the meaning translates roughly to “Alive.” Meanwhile, in Chinese, the name harkens back to a historical figure. Its character also translates to “ocean.”
How do you pronounce this name? That depends on the language. The phonetic for Bengali will be different to that of Vietnamese!
The honor of second-most searched name here goes to the famous Nguyen.
Nguyen is the most common Vietnamese family name, and you’ve most likely met someone with the surname in your life.
Based on how common this name is, it’s no wonder it’s one of the most searched on our platform. People want to know how to pronounce the name Nguyen: our phonetic has it as “nooh-enh,” which means it’s a lot simpler than it looks.
Meanwhile, Jose – another common yet tricky name – sits at number 6 on our list. Jose (along with Jorge) has stumped many a non-Spanish speaker, but once you figure it out, it’s pretty straightforward. The pronunciation for these names hinges on pronouncing that Spanish “J” – something you can read more about here.
Others are surprisingly easy to pronounce.
Maybe it’s our bias as English speakers, but some of the most searched names aren’t too difficult to pronounce at all.
Names like John and David are pretty straightforward, but are sitting squarely in our top 5. Further down, James, Marie, Sarah and Ryan round out our top 20: all names that sound pretty close to how they look.
But others are deceptively simple. Take pronouncing the names Michael (3rd), Daniel (8th) and Marie (16th): depending on the language, the name phonetics could sound quite different. Take a look at what we’ve got on NameShouts for them: these names are recorded in at least 6 languages each.
Meanwhile, De (9th) and The (13th) both seem relatively simple, but are recorded in over five different languages, with some surprising results. You might want to look them up and check how to pronounce the names in Vietnamese versus German.
You may have heard these names before.
Many of these names are on the popular side: you’ve definitely encountered someone in your life with almost all of these names.
But there are a few that you might not catch in real life.
Stark (12th), Lannister (15th) and Missandei (10th) are pretty high up in our list. With that in mind, it might be worth learning how to pronounce Game of Thrones names: as people name their kids after their favorite TV characters, you never know who you might run into.
All in all, taking a look into some of the most searched names has been pretty eye-opening for us. We noticed a ton of English names, but also a host of names with multiple linguistic roots, a good selection of Game of Thrones characters, and a few extremely difficult picks.
We’re looking forward to seeing how this changes as we continue adding names to NameShouts. Until then, get a handle on how to pronounce our most popular names. And see you back here at 1 million!
