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I'd like to use 'Dana' for a girl's name and know how Americans pronounce 'Dana'.

Do Americans pronounce 'Dana' as 'Dayna' or as 'Dahna'?

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  • I've swapped the spellings to 'y' vs 'h' as pronunciation guides. I think they may be less confusing, internationally. It seems to be the common way to differentiate 'tomato'.
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 10:17
  • In cases where badly pronounced names might cause confusion or sound rude, it doesn't matter how strangers pronounce your girl's name. What counts the most is how her parents pronounce her name. If this were Italy, Italians would feel justified in Italianizing it to Dee-anna. In time, it will be up to the bearer to decide whether to correct the pronunciation when it occurs.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 10:58
  • @Mari-LouA - I have a friend called Sean, pronounced 'see-an'. which is an Irish alternative 'correct' pronunciation. No-one ever guesses correctly, it's invariably 'shaun'. When naming someone, life is easier if you pronounce it the way everybody else is most likely to.
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 12:10
  • There was a famous American male Actor whose name was Dana Andrews and here's a youtube clip youtube.com/watch?v=QGP9UwWxGJg
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 12:31
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    @Mari-LouA - I'm sure there are lots - Dana [dayna] Carvey springs to mind - but finding one or two specific examples doesn't answer the OP's question. That's what the answer space below is for.
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 14:12

2 Answers 2

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I think we have a tomayto, tomahto here.

The US would seem to go with dayna, Brits would say dahna.

Maybe it's because of the Eurovision winner from Ireland [or, as mentioned in comments, the later one from Israel], but I don't know how much this would still influence younger people.

It does appear to be an Irish name, and Wiktionary give the Irish IPA as ˈd̪ˠæːnˠə, which, as I don't speak IPA at all, I fed into an online reader
Rather amusingly, the American voices pronounce this IPA as 'dayna' & the British ones say 'dahna'.*

Late edit. Following gotube's link to Wikipedia, it seems that the US considers this to be a name of Persian origin. Brits would consider it Irish - from a completely different route. The names then could be thought of as being unrelated, merely spelled the same, with each of the US & UK having their 'own origin' & therefore own pronunciation.

*Which reinforces why I always claim IPA is pretty much useless for teaching actual pronunciation, uninfluenced by accent :\

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    Maybe worth noting that, as far as I know, nobody anywhere says 'potahto'.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 12:28
  • That IPA reader is terrible. It's not hard to learn IPA with appropriate tables, but the phonemes in Irish are not the same as in English so you can't just map one to the other.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Nov 29, 2022 at 0:30
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Among English speakers, it's pronounced DAY-nah /deinə/.

Wikipedia agrees.

If it's a name in other languages, it's more likely pronounced /dana/, but I don't know if any other languages use it as a given name.

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  • Are there any names pronounced 'Dana' among Americans?
    – Eunhyuk
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 5:02
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    You are allowed to pronounce or spell your name any way you like. If you want /dana/ or "dahna" or "d'nah" That's fine and allowed. I know a girl called "Gale" (normally /geil/) who pronounces her name "gahli", that's fine and allowed. There is no closed list of "names" in America, almost anything is allowed. However see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_(given_name)
    – James K
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 7:04
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    As far as I remember, the Irish singer Dana (Eurovision Song Contest winner 1970) calls herself 'Dahna', which is the way most English speakers on this side of the pond would pronounce it.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 8:45
  • That's interesting - Wikipedia considers 'dayna' to be of Persian origin, whereas Brits would think 'dahna' was Irish.
    – DoneWithThis.
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 10:11
  • @KateBunting - Not just Brits, Germans and maybe Israelis too: Dana International (the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest winner) - youtube.com/watch?v=Fv83u7-mNWQ
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 12:24

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