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| HOW DO I WRITE MY NAME IN BULGARIAN? Please get to grips with the alphabet first before you start with this section For a non-native speaker, this instantly sounds like a daunting task. For example, the letters in my name don't exist in Bulgarian - what do I do? Some names are written with more letters in Bulgarian than in English and vice versa. This also seems confusing. What you need to concentrate on is the sound of your name. If your name is completely non-Bulgarian, Bulgarians will listen to how your name is pronounced and write it down so that when it's read out, it sounds like it does in English. For example, the name Mary sounds to a Bulgarian like [mehri], so it's written Мери. That was easy but what about the more complicated sounding names. What about the letters I, Y and A in names? There are no letters i and y in Bulgarian and the Bulgarian letter a is pronounced as 'ah', so how do you tell people that your name is Brian, Mike or Kate. What do we do? Well, we combine two letters a and й to create the sound ай. Please have a read of our section on the letter й, we are certain that you'll find it very useful. Similarly, with names like Ray, David, etc., we combine two letters e and й to create the sound eй. This way we get Рей and Дейвид. Again, please read our section on the letter й, if you haven't already done so. Дейвид or Давид? Make sure that you don't simply exchange the English letters in your name with Bulgarian ones. If your name is pronounced Дейвид, you don't want people to think you are called Давид. This is why if you have a foreign name, you need to say your name out loud and try to emulate what it sounds like with Bulgarian letters. This way people will know if you are Пийтър or Петър; Кейти or Кати, etc. What about the Letter J? To create a J in Bulgarian, we combine the letters д and ж and thus create the sound дж: д+ж = дж. Here are some common English names starting with J written out in Bulgarian:
Anna or Ana? As we have seen so far, in Bulgarian we read pretty much what is written down. So if a name is written out with double letters, for ex. Анна, we'll make sure we pronounce the double н and clearly emphasize it. If you are name is simply pronounced Ана, then do write it with one н. So, if your name has double letters in it but only one of them is sounded out, then write out only one of the letters. For example:
The ultimate example of this is the word Mississippi - so many double letters in English and in Bulgarian: Мисисипи. Philip, Mischa & Richard If your name has a Ф or Ш or Ч sound in it, make sure you use the right Bulgarian letters for them. Otherwise you'll end up being called Puh-hilip instead of Philip; Miss-ha instead of Mischa or Rik-hard instead of Richard. This is how you write the above names correctly in Bulgarian:
There is no TH in Bulgarian!!! Yes, we know! If your name has an English TH in it, the best thing you can do is just write it out as T or Д depending on whether the TH sounds closer to a t or a d. For example:
I am still not sure how to write my name Unfortunately, there's no way, we can cover everyone's name but we'd be more than happy to tell you how your name is written out, if you really want to know. Go to the How do I write my name in Bulgarian thread of our forum by clicking here and we'll help you. |
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