Correct How Siri Pronounces Names

Learn how to teach Siri correct pronunciation of a name by adding a phonetic field to any contact on the iPhone.

Does Siri pronounce a name incorrectly on your iPhone? Did you know you could tall Siri how to pronounce a name correctly using phonetic spelling? You do this by adding a phonetic spelling field to a persons name in the Contacts or Phone app. In that new field, you just enter the phonetic spelling, or spell out how it sounds, and Siri will start pronouncing that name correctly. See how to correct Siri’s pronunciation of names in this video for the iPhone.

Video Transcript In this video, we’re going to look at how we can have Siri pronounce our names correctly. We do this through phonetic spelling. We’re going to look at this on the iPhone, but this also works on the iPad. Let’s go to my iPhone.

Now, when Siri pronounces her name wrong, what can you do to correct the spelling? Let’s go ahead and see how Siri pronounces my last name. Pronounce my wife’s last name. It’s Beth Wassink. So the way that Siri pronounced that was, why sync? Well, let’s just say it’s Wah sync. And you can hear it’s just a little bit of a difference. But how can we tell Siri to pronounce it correctly? Well, what you’ll see when you search around on the internet is sometimes what you can do is you can tell Siri to pronounce it you’re basically say, Siri or pronouncing the name wrong. And then she’ll come back with a number of different variations. Oh, that works pretty good. But it takes a little bit of time, and it’s hit and miss, you’ll have to listen to Siri pronounce the names five times to pick the right one. And again, maybe it’s not the right way at all you can out of those five tries. So I don’t like to use Siri to correct names, I like to use phonetic spelling.

Basically, what we can do is we can add a field in the Contacts app or in the phone app, and then spell it out phonetically. So let’s go and do that. What we need to do is we need to go to either the Contacts app, or what we do is we go over to the phone app, it really doesn’t matter, we just have to get to our contacts. So what I’m going to do is go over to my contacts app here. And then we need to go to the context. So let’s go over to Beth here. Now I need to edit this, what we’re going to do is add a new field in here. So I go to edit. And then you’re going to see we have a number of fields. Here I have the first name, the last name, the nickname. These are what we call fields, I need to add a new one phonetic spelling. So I swipe up, and you’re going to see Add Field. When I select this, I have a number of different fields that I can add one of them being phonetic first name and the other one being phonetic, last name.

Now you’re also going to see we have pronunciation first name and pronunciation last name. What’s the difference between phonetic and pronounced pronunciation? Well, from what I can understand, pronunciation is more for screen readers. Where phonetic is more for Siri. So what we’re going to use as phonetic but you really could do it in both of these fields add both of the fields. So I’m going to just go with phonetic last name here. And now you’re going to see we have a new field here called phonetic last name. So now I just go in here, and I type how I want Siri to pronounce my name. So instead of y sync, WA I’m going to go wah sync wa w. So I just spell it out how it sounds. So we can see it is now spelled out how it sounds. Now I just tap on down in the upper right hand corner. And let’s go and have Siri pronounce my wife’s name again. And you’re going to hear the difference. Pronounce my wife’s last name. It’s Beth was saying. You can hear it’s just a little bit more of the WHA as opposed to the Wow.

So with phonetic spelling, what you’re able to do is correct just a little differences in spelling or pronunciation just by spelling it out how it sounds. The way that we do this is by just going into the Contacts app or into the phone app we have to get to the contact, we edit the contact and then we go and add a field. We add the phonetic field. If you’re using screen readers, you can also add the pronunciation field and put it in there as well. So that’s how we can correct series pronunciation of names on the iPhone.