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Comment by sverhagen | Hacker News Reader

My name is "Sander". It's a common Dutch calling name, related to the (baptismal, in my case) name Alexander. I have always introduced myself in the US as "sender", which is easy and fine to me, but not how you pronounce it in Dutch, where the "a" is more like in the English "hard" (I suppose). I don't care. Until my mom visited, who started calling out everyone in my sphere for mispronouncing my name, despite my pleading to leave it alone... oh, well...

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I suppose you don't like the way Americans pronounce the A in the English word "sander". I'm multilingual and it's gotten difficult for me to be sure how native speakers pronounce things, but here are some other variations that come to mind that might make sense to a native English speaking American:

Xander - a common nickname for Alexander. The x is pronounced as a z, but it still has the problem with the American a.

Sunder - Not as common, but it's a name Americans might have heard and in my opinion is closer to the Dutch Sander than "sender".

San Der - For the large percentage of Americans who are familiar with Spanish pronunciation, you might have luck with this spelling, but those Americans probably aren't the ones who mispronounce the Dutch version.

"Like Shaun Der, but with an S instead of an Sh on the front" - The way I explain the Hungarian variant Sandór to Americans is "like Shaun Door".

I remember when I learned how to pronounce the Dutch ui which I had been treating as if it were Spanish (wee). Once I learned it corresponded to English ow, suddenly a whole host of written Dutch opened itself up to me.

If you happen to know German, ui --> au is an amazing discovery (huis --> Haus, uitgang --> Ausgang, various others).

I cannot thank you enough

I wonder if you can use a rhyme to help people. Sander, rhymes with wander (for Americans). Björk inspired me with her own brilliant rhyming word. I'll leave it up to you to discover what she uses: https://youtu.be/AGtMv-EQp20

For my own name, Ambroos (Dutch as well), I've yet to find a good English rhyming word. I've just settled with telling people to pronounce it as Ambrose. It's better than people turning it into Am-bruce. For TTS I sometimes use Ahmbrohs.

Hm, Ambroos is a tricky one. The best I could think of would be "arm" (assuming they're not with a rhotic-r accent, though I could imagine people then making it sound like aam) + "close" (as in dichtbij, not sluiten.)

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