How Do You Say That?

While I was waiting for our referral of our little girl I wanted to immerse myself in as much Indian stuff as I could. I would read books and articles, watch movies, look at maps, pictures of places and people, look for baby names and dream of our little girl to be. When someone else got a referral I would read the child’s given name and wonder what our child’s name would be. I couldn’t always tell how they were pronounced though and wished I did know.


One of the first things I did when we found out our child’s name was to ask people how to pronounce it. I wanted to know what it sounded like and I knew from my many blunders before from trying that I would very likely get it wrong. I asked the agency worker, the International adoption doctor, people from Kolkata that I knew and anyone else that I thought may know for sure. Well, we had a pretty good idea after talking to all these people just how to say it. And of course I knew the name meanings. All these months of waiting for our little girl we called her by this name and loved how it sounded. Well you can imagine the surprise I got when we were at the orphanage picking up our sweet child when the Ayahs came out holding our daughter and pronouncing her name differently. It took me about 2 seconds though to realize that they were bringing in our beautiful daughter and that the name was just a tiny bit different than we had been saying it. We decided that as we had come to know our daughter as the name that we were saying all these months and that everyone we knew also knew her with this pronunciation that we would just keep it the way we had known it, also the spelling could be confusing to others if we changed it, as there would be sounds in it that you can’t tell from the spelling. I came across this link that I love and that you may enjoy also.
http://howtosaythatname.com/component/option,com_mtree/Itemid,4/

How I wish I would have had access to it earlier on, it would have saved me some embarrassment at times. I thought I would share it with those of you who may be wishing for a way to know these things yourself. This site lets you hear for yourself how to pronounce many of the names of Indian places, food and drinks, and more importantly if you want to know the sound of the name for your child, it gives Indian names, and possibly more items. As an adoptive parent of an Indian child I really want to be able to pronounce the names of Indian cities and such, I know it can change by region a little, as I found that it what happened with our daughter’s name, but I still think this is a great guide.
Another wonderful thing about this site is that anyone who knows the correct way to pronounce Indian words can also add to this site. I would ask those of you who would be willing to do this to go ahead and give those of us, who don’t know the words ,a gift and add to it. It will be a blessing to many Indian children who don’t always get to hear these words and help them become more accustomed to India. Also please feel free to pass this link along as I am sure many other adoptive parents will thank you as well. As you will see when you get there, this is a page where you can have access to words from many other countries as well, making it an even richer link.
Enjoy!