Luckily, anyone who’s a parent will probably recognize this Swedish name from the Baby Bjorn brand of baby carriers, so the odds of correct first-try pronunciation are a little better. Yes, there’s a “J” in it, but that doesn’t mean you pronounce it with the hard “J” sound: it’s be-YORN. It may be short and simple, but people will invariably say it with a long “EE” sound at the beginning. The name of the Greek goddess of the dawn, this one’s pronounced AE-ohs. You’d never guess this one included a “V” sound and not an “M,” but that’s exactly why this Irish name makes the list: it’s pronounced nee-ev, two syllables. It’s sometimes spelled with a diacritical mark over the “I” (as in Anaïs), but this probably won’t help clarify pronunciation to most people, and such marks can sometimes cause confusion when it comes to legal documents. It doesn’t look long enough to be a three-syllable name, but this French/Catalan form of Anna is pronounced ah-nah-EES. In other words, perfect for your little sweetness. But they are incredibly beautiful and often melodic sounding.

Just to be clear, these are only hard to pronounce for Americans, and not to the native speakers of their original language. Like nearly every other name (except for those like Raddix that are just completely made up - we’re looking at you, Cameron Diaz), these are rooted in a language other than English, but haven’t been Americanized to the point of easy pronunciation … at least not in their traditional spellings. RELATED: Yes, My Kids Have Weird Names - So What?

Some of the most beautiful names are, unfortunately, the ones that the general public will butcher over and over while trying to pronounce - and for good reason. Then there are the more unique baby names: those that are unquestionably unique but will definitely require a lifetime of corrections (or just a grudging acceptance of mispronunciations). On one hand, nobody will mispronounce Emma or Noah… but Emma and Noah will run into a bazillion other Emmas and Noahs. One of the most common baby naming dilemmas is pronunciation.

Unique baby girl names starting with j