Questions & Answers

Xaiya is easy to say! It sounds beautiful. I agree about the mistakes for the child but it won't be hard to learn :) my nephews name is "xavier" pronouced "zavier"

Love the name! Sounds great! I am all for the new-age names!!!

Go with whatever name you want as long as you're prepared for people to misspell it and mispronounce it. Personally I wouldn't go with Xaiya because you're basically dooming your child to a lifetime of correcting people and I wouldn't want to deal with that make my child deal with it. Changing a spelling slightly to make it unique is one thing, but that's a unique name to begin with and then choosing a non-traditional spelling is creating a lot of work for yourself and your child later in life. I would only change the spelling of a name if it was still clear how it should be pronounced. My name is spelled slightly differently than the most common version so people sometimes misspell it, but it is very clear how to pronounce it when you see it written so it hasn't been too much of a pain for me.

I look at Xaiya and I honestly don't know how to say it.

You do have to be careful with unique/bizarre names. There have been numerous studies that those names are a hindrance to children as they grow up and once they're grown. There's the childhood bullying to consider. Then as they start applying for jobs there is subtle, unintentional prejudice against those with unusual, hard to pronounce names.

Personally, Working in an HR office and dealing with 100s of names a day imputting them into forms, i have to say that sticking with the original spelling of a name is most effective, especially wih names that are different/hard to figure out the pronounciation of anyways. Different spellings clue no one in to the pronounciation so it's hard not to get it wrong. The name will sound the same no matter how it is spelled so why make things more complecated than you have to for them growing up. My husbands first name is very uniquw ans is always mispronounced and its spelled differently on op of it so he has to correct ppl a lot in his day to day interactions i can tell you while he loves his name he's considered legally changing the spelling a few times.

My husband and I spent a lot of time trying to find a unique name for our child. The biggest requirement was that it was spelt in a way that everyone can easily identify and pronounce, to prevent years of frustration for our child.

The teacher in me cringes at the spelling of this name, though the name itself is very cute. I would very much lean to spelling it in one of the manners listed that make it clear what on how it is pronounced.

One test you can do, is to write the name down and take it to the mall...walk up to random people and ask them how they'd say it. A weird but effective way of seeing how many different names your child will be called!

That said, if you like the 'X' more than having your child's name pronounce properly the above suggestions don't apply! They were just a requirement for us largely due to my being a teacher and seeing kids reactions to having their names mispronounced and to my husband's dislike of weird spellings for otherwise nice names.

A very pretty and unusual name!