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Comment by behnamoh | Hacker News Reader

Unrelated to the post, but I wonder how Americans pronounce and spell Banham's name.

Personal experience: My name is Behnam and I've often seen people think it's "Benham" or even "Brenan". This makes me think maybe it'd be wise to change my name (either pick an English name, or use Benham instead). I've seen many asians do this, e.g. Terry Tao, Andrew Ng, etc.

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I'm confused as to what you're saying. Is Banham not just an English name? English people named after Banham (in Norfolk, where Reyner's hometown, Norwich, is) have existed for at least 400 years it seems.

Behnam I think I could spell from hearing, and pronounce, but a lot of people struggle with names in general. English phonology has so much to offer, that a lot of names can be written relatively faithfully in it; it's certainly a lot easier than trying to write western names in Japanese, or Mandarin (it's really not pronounced 亞倫, guys).

I was curious to see how people pronounce/spell less common names, esp. those that are not of English origin (such as my name). "Behnam" has an "h" in there, which most English speakers don't pronounce. Also, the second syllable should be pronounced like "numb", not "nam". I've been trying to figure out how to convey these using the English phonology. I came up with a bunch of ideas like "Behnum", "Beh-Nam", etc. but those seem awkward.

Yeah, I think probably it's never going to get easier. If you come across somebody who knows a little about pronouncing Persian names, they'll probably get it right, but there's only so much people can manage. I doubt most native Persians would be able to accurately transcribe English and Scottish names with Farsi rules, unless they had some specific exposure.

You're right. I think some English names would be hard to be transcribed with Farsi rules. Although in my experience, most of them are easily pronounced (with a bit of accent) by native Persian speakers.

Oh hi! There are very few Banhams in Australia for some reason. I always need to spell it out for people. On the rare chance a British or Irish person needs to write my name though they know how to do it straight away and I get unseasonably excited.

> though they know how to do it straight away and I get unseasonably excited.

I can imagine how exciting that must feel!

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