The top 20 mispronounced baby names across the world 🤔

You'll be surprised at Number 1

Author: Alex RossPublished 25th Sep 2023

It's no secret that there's been a rise in unique names over the last few decades, mainly thanks to influences from TV shows, and celebrities such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, and The Kardashians.

But whilst some unique names can be difficult to pronounce, a new study carried out by WordFinderX has found a very popular British and Irish name has actually topped the charts for being the most mispronounced baby name across the world.

According to the research, the popular name of Sean was queried over a million times across the world.

Check out the top 20 mispronounced names across the world:

1) Sean

Origin: Irish
Number of listens: 1 million
Pronounced: 'Shaw-n'

2) Xuxa

Origin: Basque
Number of listens: 802,000
Pronounced: 'shoo-shah'

3) Victoria

Origin: Latin
Number of listens: 696,000
Pronounced: 'vik-toh-ree-aa'

4) Francisco

Origin: Portuguese/Spanish
Number of listens: 635,000
Pronounced: 'fɾanˈsisko'

5) Plato

Origin: Greek
Number of listens: 617,000
Pronounced: 'play-tow'

6) Anna

Origin: Hebrew
Number of listens: 532,000
Pronounced: 'Ann-uh'

7) Estrella

Origin: Spanish
Number of listens: 490,000
Pronounced: 'ehs-treh-yah'

8) Alexander

Origin: Greek
Number of listens: 422,000
Pronounced: 'a-luhg-zaan-duh'

9) Benjamin

Origin: Hebrew
Number of listens: 399,000
Pronounced: 'ben-juh-min'

10) Michael

Origin: Hebrew
Number of listens: 364,000
Pronounced: 'my-kuhl'

11) Maria

Origin: Latin
Number of listens: 357,000
Pronounced: 'muh-ree-uh'

12) Xavier

Origin: Latin
Number of listens: 349,000
Pronounced: 'zay-vee-uh'

13) Thomas

Origin: Aramaic
Number of listens: 344,000
Pronounced: 'tom-uhs'

14) Anne

Origin: English, Hebrew, French
Number of listens: 343,000
Pronounced: 'an'

15) David

Origin: Hebrew
Number of listens: 339,000
Pronounced: 'day-vid'

16) Mary

Origin: Hebrew
Number of listens: 330,000
Pronounced: 'mair-ee'

17) Guillaume

Origin: French
Number of listens: 324,000
Pronounced: 'gee-yohm'

18) Laura

Origin: Latin
Number of listens: 322,000
Pronounced: 'law-ruh'

19) Juan

Origin: Spanish
Number of listens: 299,000
Pronounced: 'whan'

20) Saoirse

Origin: Irish
Number of listens: 293,000
Pronounced: 'sur-sha'

In order to carry out the study, WordFinderX curated a list of 12,768 names and their origins from Nameberry.com. The company then researched how many times each of the names had been listened to on Forvo.com, an online pronunciation library, to determine which are the most mispronounced names around the world.

The research also found that the top five mispronounced English names are: Anne, James, Lauren, Evelyn and Christian, whilst the top five mispronounced Irish names are: Sean, Saoirse, Siobhan, Ryan, and Liam.

You can see the full research here.

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